Jaynes says young children exhibit potential bicameralism when they conjure up imaginary playmates. At campus lectures, Jaynes says he often asks how many people in his audience had invisible playmates when they were young. "Usually around two-thirds say they did and most recall that they could hear the voices of these playmates." Jaynes says.

At one lecture at a college in the Southwest Jaynes encountered a young female whose eerie story he hauntingly recounts:

At the end of the class one girl lagged behind. She told me that as a child her parents were often absent from home and she had been brought up in the care of her elderly grandmother, who was schizophrenic and who hallucinated all the time. The girl herself, living in this environment, started having several imaginary playmates with whom she would converse. When her parents discovered this they took her from her grandmother and managed to 'train the voices away.' But the girl told me that now, whenever she is in any stressful situation, her imaginary playmates come back to her and talk to her, and they've all grown up and are the same age as her.

Jaynes was born in Newton, Massachusetts, 55 years ago. A soft-spoken but articulate man, he has devoted most of his adult life to scholarly pursuits, but has not led the conventional life of an academic. He attended Harvard for one year as an undergraduate but left because of financial pressures. He received a diploma from McGill University in Montreal instead. As a graduate student at yale, Jaynes turned down his Ph.D. in psychology for what he calls "political reasons." He says there was, and still is, "much too much emphasis on things like degrees, and too little emphasis on intellectual life to which universities should be devoted."

Without a doctorate, Jaynes nevertheless managed to obtain a position on the Princeton faculty, where after 15 years he still holds the post of lecturer in psychology.

Although he lacks a prestigious title, Jaynes seems well-respected by his fellow psychologists. John F. Kihlstrom, assistant professor of Psychology, last week called Jaynes "an important early figure in psychobiology" who has "never seen the need for a Ph.D. but who made it on his own regardless of the appropriate academic credentials." Kihlstrom added that "most in the field respect Jaynes, but much in the book will prove initially hard to swallow."

Jaynes realizes that some of his theories may prove "hard to swallow." He also fears that some people will associate the book with imaginative commercial ventures like Erichvon Daniken's Chariots of the Gods rather than seeing it as a serious scholarly work. To prevent such offhand dismissal of his theory, Jaynes asked his publisher for complete control over the book's format. He chose the type style, designed the cover, and insisted on the rather ponderous title and thorough footnoting. He says the book's present appearance clearly shows he is "not trying to sell books but to contribute to knowledge." "Books are much too important to leave to publishers," he adds with a grin.

Jaynes probably will not surrender his future books to the commercial instincts of a publishing house either, but with the success Origin is enjoying thus far his publisher would not mind. The book is already into a third printing and Houghton-Mifflin cannot keep up with orders for it, a solid indication that the tongue-twisting, technical-sounding title has not deterred many purchasers. Jaynes says he intends to follow his present work with a book on memory, then one proposing a new theory about dreams, and finally one on the consciousness of children. He adds that all of them will build on the theories in the current book.

Jaynes realizes, though, that he may be building on a weak foundation. "The book is like a tree, and I'm going out on a limb in many places, there are so many ends where testing could be done," he says.

Kihlstrom agrees that the book "tries to make a lot of connections," but may attempt to tie too many disparate ideas together. He says that although much of Jaynes's theory is "speculative," it is also "very provocative," providing "lots of grist for the theoretical mill, whether or not one buys the whole package."

Clearly Jaynes has bought, or sold himself, on the whole package. He believes that some parts of his theory--the idea of bicameralism, his view of consciousness--could stand alone even if the notion that ancient civilizations heard inner voices were refuted. But Jaynes still thinks many of the differences between ancient and modern man are convincingly explained by his entire theory of the brain's evolution and the breakdown of bicameralism.

"I don't think anyone has looked at the ancient world in this way, but when you do it fits into a pattern and you can see it," Jaynes says. "Look at the change in human nature, the change in man's relationship to God" between ancient and modern times, he adds. Everything may seem much more complicated, more uncertain today. But then, he concludes, "men were not good or evil then. It was the voice of God."