Tuesday, August 16, 2011

The Street Man

(A man in the corner of the Port Authority, relatively kempt above 35):
Voices? I hear all the voices. But they don’t tell me nothing I don’t already know. You see, I know everything. My thoughts are always ahead of everything. What voices do you want to know about? Cosmoligian, terrestrian, solarian, universalian…? You see, it’s the psychology. Yes, listen, when everything started the earth was made and god did it. I know all that. Jesus knows it. I already know everything even if they’re yelling. I know what’s wrong and what’s right. You see, I’m always trying to catch up with my reality. I don’t even try anymore. It’s always so far ahead of everything. I can’t keep up with it. …No one can ever know me or understand it.
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-Interviewed homeless person in NYC on the subject of auditory hallucinations
-Conducted by Michael Rosenberg, student of Julian Jaynes
-Presented by Julian Jaynes at a conference of Harvard U. Dept. of Psych., Oct. 1989
-Published in Philosophy and Psychopathology, M. Spitzer and B.A. Maher (eds), 1990
-Found on p81 of Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited, Marcel Kuijsten (ed), Julian Jaynes Society, 2006

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