Brian J. McVeigh (born 1959) is an American scholar of Asia who specializes in Japanese pop art, education, politics, and history.
Jaynes's impact is also evident in McVeigh's first project which explored the role of spirit possession in a Japanese religious movement.
"[3] His other relevant articles include "Mental Imagery and Hallucinations as Adaptive Behavior: Divine Voices and Visions as Neuropsychological Vestiges",[4] "Standing Stomachs, Clamoring Chests and Cooling Livers: Metaphors in the Psychological Lexicon of Japanese"[5] and "The Self as Interiorized Social Relations: Applying a Jaynesian Approach to Problems of Agency and Volition.
McVeigh sees two trends characterizing history, the steady accumulation of wealth and an "inward turn" or "psychological interiorization" which legitimizes and promotes a "propertied self."
This development heralded the shift from sumptuary restrictions on consumption to faith in the liberating power and inherent goodness of property rights and unfettered self-expression.
[8] He termed the loss of academic value and poor quality schooling "institutional mendacity," a claim that earned him both criticism and praise in Japan.
With elite political and corporate interests determining policy, the purpose of education is lost and the value of grades and diplomas is diluted.
He contends that his arguments about Japanese higher education possess general applicability: the more intense massive bureaucratic forces become, the more we excessively dramatize ourselves for the wrong reasons.
These latter policies ironically increase the perception of identity threat since modernization, at least from an idealized "traditional" perspective, makes Japan seem somehow more "foreign."