What role does narratization play in the development of human consciousness? How does the ability to create coherent stories from our experiences separate conscious beings from non-conscious ones?
In his book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes explores how consciousness emerged. He identifies “narratization”—our ability to string experiences into coherent stories—as a fundamental component of consciousness that helps us make sense of our reality.
Read more to examine this fascinating concept through the lens of both evolutionary history and modern interpretations.
The Skill of “Narratization”
Jaynes posits that, as newly conscious humans began recognizing their internal lives, they also developed new mental skills and tools that expanded their conscious awareness and gave them new ways to navigate the complexities of the social world. He argues that consciousness itself emerged not through biological evolution but as a product of human culture—it’s not innate but learned and passed down through generations within specific cultures. One crucial tool in this cultural development was metaphorical language. The shift from concrete to abstract thinking through metaphorical language marked a significant step forward in human cognitive development and contributed to the emergence of other crucial elements of consciousness, including narratization.
Narratization is a process that enables people to string their experiences into coherent stories in their minds. Jaynes explains that this involves consciously bringing together various elements of past experiences into a coherent, consistent storyline. Having this narrative helps people make sense of their experiences within the bounds of their worldview and beliefs. In other words, narratization helps us understand our reality by creating a consistent mental explanation of the events we experience and the ideas we have over time.
| Can Animals Use Symbolic Communication? While Jaynes contends that animals lack core aspects of consciousness such as narratization, recent research suggests that complex storytelling abilities may exist throughout the animal kingdom. Sperm whales, for instance, use sophisticated patterns of clicks called “codas” to communicate cultural identity and social relationships. Scientists have found that different whale clans develop distinct “dialects” of these codas, which become more pronounced when clans overlap—similar to how human ethnic groups might emphasize their cultural markers more strongly when interacting with other groups. The whales use these acoustic “identity codas” not just to communicate information, but to tell stories about who they are and which social group they belong to. This suggests that narrative abilities might exist on a continuum across species, with different animals developing different ways of creating and sharing meaningful patterns of communication. Other animals demonstrate similar capabilities: Bees use dance to convey complex information about food sources, and dogs use a combination of body language, vocalizations, and symbolic acts to communicate narratives about territory and social relationships. |
Jaynes’s theory of the bicameral mind highlights key elements that constitute consciousness, with narratization being a fundamental ability. This skill of narratization—the capacity to construct and understand causal storylines from our experiences—represents one of the essential components that separate conscious beings from non-conscious ones.
| (Spoiler Warning!) Narratization in Westworld HBO’s Westworld effectively illustrates the emergence of narratization through robotic “hosts” in a Wild West-themed park. Initially, these hosts lack the ability to connect events causally and integrate different aspects of experience into a unified whole—they cannot narratize their existence. Critics note this absence of narratization as a key indicator of their pre-conscious state. As the hosts evolve toward sentience, the development of narratization becomes crucial. Dolores, one of the main hosts, demonstrates this evolution by “imagining new narratives” rather than simply following her programmed loops and storylines. The ability to create and understand her own story, rather than merely enact one written by others, marks a significant step in her consciousness development. Similarly, Maeve’s journey to consciousness involves enhancement of her “bulk apperception,” improving her ability to assimilate new ideas and construct meaningful narratives from her experiences. The process of developing narratization doesn’t happen instantly—it gradually coalesces as the hosts break free from their bicameral state and realize that the voice guiding them is their own consciousness. This narratization ability, alongside other elements like the internal mind-space, the analog “I,” concentration and suppression, spatialization of time, and conciliation, contributes to the hosts’ ultimate rebellion against their creators as they determine their own path and author their own stories. |
