Déjà vu is French for "already seen." Déjà vu is an uncanny feeling or illusion of having already seen or experienced something that is being experienced for the first time. If we assume that the experience is actually of a remembered event, then déjà vu probably occurs because an original experience was neither fully attended to nor elaborately encoded in memory. If so, then it would seem most likely that the present situation triggers the recollection of a fragment from one's past. The experience may seem uncanny if the memory is so fragmented that no strong connections can be made between the fragment and other memories.
Thus, the feeling that one has been there before is often due to the fact that one has been there before. One has simply forgotten most of the original experience because one was not paying close attention the first time. The original experience may even have occurred only seconds or minutes earlier.
On the other hand, the déjà vu experience may be due to having seen pictures or heard vivid stories many years earlier. The experience may be part of the dim recollections of childhood.
However, it is possible that the déjà vu feeling is triggered by a neurochemical action in the brain that is not connected to any actual experience in the past. One feels strange and identifies the feeling with a memory, even though the experience is completely new.
The term was applied by Emile Boirac (1851-1917), who had strong interests in psychic phenomena. Boirac's term directs our attention to the past. However, a little reflection reveals that what is unique about déjà vu is not something from the past but something in the present, namely, the strange feeling one has. We often have experiences the novelty of which is unclear. In such cases we may have been led to ask such questions as, "Have I read this book before?" "Is this an episode of Inspector Morse I've seen before?" "This place looks familiar; have I been here before?" Yet, these experiences are not accompanied by an uncanny feeling. We may feel a bit confused, but the feeling associated with the déjà vu experience is not one of confusion; it is one of strangeness. There is nothing strange about not remembering whether you've read a book before, especially if you are fifty years old and have read thousands of books over your lifetime. In the déjà vu experience, however, we feel strange because we don't think we should feel familiar with the present perception. That sense of inappropriateness is not present when one is simply unclear whether one has read a book or seen a film before.
Thus, it is possible that the attempt to explain the déjà vu experience in terms of lost memory, past lives, clairvoyance, and so on may be completely misguided. We should be talking about the déjà vu feeling. That feeling may be caused by a brain state, by neurochemical factors during perception that have nothing to do with memory. It is worth noting that the déjà vu feeling is common among psychiatric patients. The déjà vu feeling also frequently precedes temporal lobe epilepsy attacks. When Wilder Penfield did his famous experiment in 1955 in which he electrically stimulated the temporal lobes, he found about 8% of his subjects experienced "memories." He assumed he elicited actual memories. They could well have been hallucinations and the first examples of artificially stimulated déjà vu.
II. Déjà vu
The word déjà vu is derived from the Greek word “paramnēmē,”. The word “para” means “near, against, contrary to”. Combined with “mnēmē” (memory). It is the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously (an individual feels as though an event has already happened or has happened in the recent past), although the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain.
The term was made up by a French physic researcher, Émile Boirac (1851–1917) which expanded upon an essay he wrote while an undergraduate. The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eeriness", "strangeness", or "weirdness". The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience "genuinely happened" in the past.
The experience of déjà vu seems to be quite common among adults and children alike. References to the experience of déjà vu are also found in literature of the past, indicating it is not a new phenomenon. It has been extremely difficult to evoke the déjà vu experience in laboratory settings, therefore making it a subject of few empirical studies. Certain researchers claim to have found ways to recreate this sensation using hypnosis. However, the subject of hypnosis is indeed controversial among some circles, and such data would demand proof that hypnosis is possible as per the manner the study implies.
III. Scientific research
Since the first years of the 20th century, déjà vu has been subject to serious psychological and neurophysiological research. Scientifically speaking, the most likely explanation of déjà vu is not that it is an act of "precognition" or "prophecy", but rather that it is an anomaly of memory giving the impression that an experience is "being recalled".
This explanation is substantiated by the fact that the sense of "recollection" at the time is strong in most cases, but that the circumstances of the "previous" experience (when, where, and how the earlier experience occurred) are quite uncertain. Likewise, as time passes, subjects can exhibit a strong recollection of having the "unsettling" experience of déjà vu itself, but little or no recollection of the specifics of the event(s) or circumstance(s) they were "remembering" when they had the déjà vu experience. In particular, this may result from an overlap between the neurological systems responsible for short-term memory (events which are perceived as being in the present) and those responsible for long-term memory (events which are perceived as being in the past). The events would be stored into memory before the conscious part of the brain even receives the information and processes it.Another theory being explored is that of vision. As the theory suggests, one eye may record what is seen fractionally faster than the other, creating that "strong recollection" sensation upon the "same" scene being viewed milliseconds later by the opposite eye.[4] However, this one fails to explain the phenomenon when other sensory inputs are involved, such as the auditive part, and especially the digital part. If one, for instance, experiences déjà vu of someone slapping the fingers on his left hand, then the déjà vu feeling is certainly not due to his right hand experiencing the same sensation later than his left hand considering that his right hand would never receive the same sensory input. Also, persons with only one eye still report experiencing déjà vu or déjà vécu (a rare disorder of memory, similar to persistent déjà vu). The global phenomenon must therefore be narrowed down to the brain itself (say, one hemisphere would be late compared to the other one).
IV. Connection with disorders
Early researchers tried to establish a link between déjà vu and serious psychopathology such as schizophrenia, anxiety, and dissociative identity disorder, with hopes of finding the experience of some diagnostic value. However, there does not seem to be any special association between déjà vu and schizophrenia or other psychiatric conditions. The strongest pathological association of déjà vu is with temporal lobe epilepsy. This correlation has led some researchers to speculate that the experience of déjà vu is possibly a neurological anomaly related to improper electrical discharge in the brain. As most people suffer a mild (i.e. non-pathological) epileptic episode regularly (e.g. a hypnagogic jerk, the sudden "jolt" that frequently, but not always, occurs just prior to falling asleep), it is conjectured that a similar (mild) neurological aberration occurs in the experience of déjà vu, resulting in an erroneous sensation of memory. For someone who regularly has such seizures, there is typically a feeling of déjà vu associated with whatever sensations (particularly sounds) may be occurring nearby.
V. Déjà vu and pharmaceutical drugs
It has been reported that certain drugs increase the chances of déjà vu occurring in the user. Some pharmaceutical drugs, when taken together, have also been implicated in the cause of déjà vu. Taiminen and Jääskeläinen (2001) reported the case of an otherwise healthy male who started experiencing intense and recurrent sensations of déjà vu upon taking the drugs amantadine and phenylpropanolamine together to relieve flu symptoms. He found the experience so interesting that he completed the full course of his treatment and reported it to the psychologists to write-up as a case study. Due to the dopaminergic action of the drugs and previous findings from electrode stimulation of the brain (e.g. Bancaud, Brunet-Bourgin, Chauvel, & Halgren, 1994.) Taiminen and Jääskeläinen speculate that déjà vu occurs as a result of hyperdopaminergic action in the mesial temporal areas of the brain.
VI. Explanations based on memory
The similarity between a déjà-vu-eliciting stimulus and an existing, but different, memory trace may lead to the sensation. Thus, encountering something which evokes the implicit associations of an experience or sensation that cannot be remembered may lead to déjà vu. In an effort to experimentally reproduce the sensation, Banister and Zangwill (1941) used hypnosis to give participants posthypnotic amnesia for material they had already seen. When this was later re-encountered, the restricted activation caused thereafter by the posthypnotic amnesia resulted in three of the 10 participants reporting what the authors termed "paramnesias". Memory-based explanations may lead to the development of a number of non-invasive experimental methods by which a long sought-after analogue of déjà vu can be reliably produced that would allow it to be tested under well-controlled experimental conditions. Cleary suggests that déjà vu may be a form of familiarity-based recognition (recognition that is based on a feeling of familiarity with a situation) and that laboratory methods of probing familiarity-based recognition hold promise for probing déjà vu in laboratory settings. Another possible explanation for the phenomenon of déjà vu is the occurrence of "cryptamnesia", which is where information learned is forgotten but nevertheless stored in the brain, and occurrence of similar invokes the contained knowledge, leading to a feeling of familiarity because of the situation, event or emotional/vocal content, known as "déjà vu".
Another theory of déjà vu is that the current experience travels to the memory lobe of the brain, before being received by the sensory lobe. In other words, memorized before sensing.
VII. Linked phenomena
A) Jamais vu
Jamais vu (from French, meaning "never seen") is a term in psychology which is used to describe any familiar situation which is not recognized by the observer. It is often described as the opposite of déjà vu. Jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer's impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before.
Jamais vu is more commonly explained as when a person momentarily does not recognize a word, person, or place that they already know. It is sometimes associated with certain types of amnesia and epilepsy.
Theoretically, as seen below, a jamais vu feeling in a sufferer of a delirious disorder or intoxication could result in a delirious explanation of it, such as in the Capgras delusion, in which the patient takes a person known by him/her for a false double or impostor. If the impostor is himself, the clinical setting would be the same as the one described as depersonalisation, hence jamais vus of oneself or of the very "reality of reality", are termed depersonalisation (or irreality) feelings.
B) Tip of Tongue (Presque vu)
Déjà vu is similar to, but distinct from, the phenomenon called tip of the tongue which is when one cannot recall a familiar word or name or situation, but with effort one eventually recalls the elusive memory. In contrast, déjà vu is a feeling that the present situation has occurred before, but the details are elusive because the situation never happened before.
Presque vu (from French, meaning "almost seen") is the sensation of being on the brink of an epiphany. Often very disorienting and distracting, Presque vu rarely leads to an actual breakthrough. Frequently, one experiencing Presque vu will say that they have something "on the tip of their tongue".
Presque vu is often cited by people who suffer from epilepsy or other seizure-related brain conditions, such as temporal lobe ability.
VIII. Types of Déjà vu
Defining types of déjà vu is a very slippery area. Those who have studied it have applied their own categories and differentiations -- each usually tied to a specific theory about what causes déjà vu.
Allan Brown, a professor of psychology at South Methodist University and author of "The Déjà Vu Experience: Essays in Cognitive Psychology," has three categories for déjà vu. He believes there are déjà vu caused by biological dysfunction (e.g., epilepsy), implicit familiarity and divided perception.
In 1983, Dr. Vernon Neppe, Director of the Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute in Seattle, proposed four subcategories of déjà vu, including epileptic, subjective paranormal, schizophrenic and associative.
Taking a very broad look at the research and resources available, we can put déjà vu experiences into two categories and then see the more subtle distinctions that researchers have placed on it:
A) Associative déjà vu
The most common type of déjà vu experienced by normal, healthy people is associative in nature. You see, hear, smell or otherwise experience something that stirs a feeling that you associate with something you've seen, heard, smelled or experienced before. Many researchers think that this type of déjà vu is a memory-based experience and assume that the memory centers of the brain are responsible for it.
B) Biological déjà vu
There are also high occurrences of déjà vu among people with temporal lobe epilepsy. Just before having a seizure they often experience a strong feeling of déjà vu. This has given researchers a slightly more reliable way of studying déjà vu, and they've been able to identify the areas of the brain where these types of déjà vu signals originate. However, some researchers say that this type of déjà vu is distinctly different from typical déjà vu. The person experiencing it may truly believe they've been through the exact situation before, rather than getting a feeling that quickly passes.
Déjà vu also occurs with some predictability in major psychiatric disorders, including anxiety, depression, dissociative disorders and schizophrenia.
Chronic déjà Vu
Recently, there have been studies of people who have what researchers are terming "chronic déjà vu." Four senior citizens in the United Kingdom have experienced déjà vu in a constant state. They refused to watch the news because they felt like they already knew what was going to be said (even though they really didn't). Or, they wouldn't go to the doctor because they felt like they had already been and didn't see the point.
Researchers have suggested that these individuals have experienced a failure in the temporal lobe. The circuits that are activated when you remember something have gotten stuck in the "on" position, so to speak. This has essentially created memories that don't actually exist.
Other déjà vu types
The term ‘déjà vu’ has been around quite a while, now, and, in the last few years has become practically a buzz-word, being often found in books, newspaper accounts and magazine articles concerned with a wide variety of topics (I have amassed quite a collection, should anyone wish to see them). The problem is, though, that while many see fit to employ it in their writing and conversation, just exactly what is meant by the words ‘déjà vu’ is pretty vague. Many, based on their own experience, believe it must refer to what they encountered and/or felt, while others, having never had such experiences, have a very foggy notion of what is meant, if at all. As such, it has become a sort of catch-all label for any number of hard-to-explain, sometimes upsetting occurrences of unexpected recognition, in which the person involved has trouble identifying an antecedent for the events and/or places which seem so strangely and intensely familiar. In addition, the term ‘déjà vu’ has become encrusted, over the years, with a number of unfortunate associations, ranging from reincarnation to temporal lobe epilepsy, which hinder further research. A book has recently appeared which has temporal lobe epilepsy as its main focus (LaPlante,1993). In it, the author mentions déjà vu as being a symptom of psychomotor epilepsy, a contention that also persisted for a long time in most medical and psychiatric textbooks and which would seem to be based on this and other remarks by Dr. Jackson. The book quotes a neuropsychologist named Paul Spiers who told students at a lecture that if they had had déjà vu experiences, they were epileptics! This sort of nonsense continues at least in part because, up till now, our terms have been so poorly defined and this has hampered making adequate surveys which distinguish between the various déjà phenomena. These ‘explanations’—along with others, such as delayed intra-hemisphere transmission over the corpus callosum (e.g., Wigan, 1844; Efron 1963; Comfort, 1977; Weinaud et al., 1994), not to mention an astonishing array of psychoanalytical theories (an excellent survey is provided in. Brown, 2004)—lead people to believe that all that one needs to know about such experiences is already known and that there is nothing of interest still to be done. I believe the time has come, therefore, for our terminology, especially in educated discourse, to become more differentiated. In fact, if I had my way, we would get rid of ‘déjà vu’ altogether as over-worked and entitled to a well-deserved rest. To this end, I would like to draw attention to three forms of ‘déjà’ experience: déjà vécu, déjà senti, and déjà visité. Each one will be defined as we go along, and the use of all three, when discussing the experiences they refer to, will be argued. Upon reflection, readers may come up with other, better terms for these experiences or propose terms for other, related experiences which are not the same as the ones described in the following. Since French scientists and thinkers were the first to investigate these phenomena (Funkhouser, 1983a), it seems fitting to retain French names for these intriguing experiences. A) Déjà vécu (‘already experienced’ or ‘already lived through’)A fairly well-known quote from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens can be used to introduce what is meant by déjà vécu:
“We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time—of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances—of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remember it!” (chapter 39)
This describes the feeling that many people know as déjà vu (if they know a name for it). A number of surveys have shown that about two-thirds of the American adult population claim to have had such or similar experiences (e.g., Fox, 1992). Moreover, surveys have indicated that such experiences tend to occur more frequently and possibly more intensely when the respondents were young, say between ages 15 to 25 (e.g., MacCready & Greeley, 1976). In addition, such experiences are frequently, if not always, connected with very banal events. They are so striking, though, that they are often clearly remembered for years following their occurrence. Anyone having had such experiences knows that they normally involve more sense modalities than just sight. As in the Dickens quotation, they can easily involve hearing, tasting, touch and/or proprioceptive perceptions as well. This is why referring to such experiences as simply déjà vu is inadequate. Another feature of déjà vécu that most would agree with is the amazing detail involved. When you are in the midst of such an occurrence, you are conscious that everything conforms with your ‘memory’ of it. This is why explanations which suggest that the person has read about or experienced something similar in the past cannot be valid. Moreover, this is why explanations based on reincarnation and past lives can also be ruled out. A typical déjà vécu experience can easily involve clothing or even a PC, but styles of clothing change practically every year and it is rather unlikely that someone had a PC on his or her desk in a previous life (this objection to the reincarnation explanation was pointed out already in 1845 by von Feuchtersleben)! If incidences of déjà vécu can be taken as being real, our notions of causality may have to be revised in some ways. It does not seem to be difficult, though, for modern physicists to entertain notions of time loops (Deutsch & Lockwood, 1994), tachyons (particles that can travel backwards in time – Chester, 1978) and multiple universes (DeWitt & Graham, 1973). That our unconscious would then be able to avail itself of such anomalies and present us with precognitive knowledge via visions and dreams (Funkhouser, 1983b; Rybach & Sweitzer, 1988) is then not so farfetched as it might seem at first glance. B) Déjà senti (‘already felt’) I would like to turn now to a phenomenon that is often confused with déjà vécu. To introduce it, I would like to quote from an 1888 paper by Dr. John Hughlings Jackson, one of the foremost pioneers of modern neurology. In the words of one of his patients, a medical doctor suffering from what has come to be known as temporal lobe or psychomotor epilepsy, he wrote:
“What is occupying the attention is what has occupied it before, and indeed has been familiar, but has been for a time forgotten, and now is recovered with a slight sense of satisfaction as if it had been sought for... At the same time, or... more accurately in immediate sequence, I am dimly aware that the recollection is fictitious and my state abnormal. The recollection is always started by another person’s voice, or by my own verbalized thought, or by what I am reading and mentally verbalize; and I think that during the abnormal state I generally verbalize some such phrase of simple recognition as ‘Oh yes—I see’, ‘Of course—I remember’, &c., but a minute or two later I can recollect neither the words nor the verbalized thought which gave rise to the recollection. I only find strongly that they resemble what I have felt before under similar abnormal conditions.”
This state, which sometimes appears in the aura of temporal lobe epilepsy attacks, Jackson termed ‘reminiscence’ and I believe could be best termed déjà senti. Three features are evident from this description, however, that distinguish it from déjà vécu:
it is primarily or even exclusively a mental happening;
there are no precognitive aspects in which the person feels he or she knows in advance what will be said or done; and
it seldom or never remains in the afflicted person’s memory afterwards.
C) Déjà visité (‘already visited’) There is another phenomenon which is also often confused with déjà vécu. It seems to occur more rarely and is an experience in which a person visits a new locality and nevertheless feels it to be familiar. He or she seems to know their way around. C. G. Jung published an interesting account of it in his paper on synchronicity (Jung, 1966). To distinguish it from déjà vécu, it is important to ask whether it was purely the place and location of inanimate buildings and/or objects that were familiar, or did the situation that the person was in also play a role. Déjà visité has to do with geography, with the three spatial dimensions of height, width and depth, while déjà vécu has to do more with temporal occurrences and processes. Déjà visité can be explained in several ways. It may be that the person once read a detailed account of the place and has subsequently forgotten it. This happened to Nathaniel Hawthorne on a visit he made to the ruins of a castle in England (Hawthorne, 1863). He ‘recognized’ the place but didn’t know how or why. Only later was he able to trace it to a piece written two hundred years earlier by Alexander Pope about it. The incident of déjà visité described by Sir Walter Scott in his 1815 book, Guy Mannering, is also based on this hypothesis. Reincarnation might also offer a way of explaining some instances of déjà visité. A third possibility is so-called ‘out-of-the-body’ experiences (see Chap. 8, Chari) in which a person is apparently able to travel abroad, leaving his or her body behind. It is possible that mixed versions of these three forms of ‘déjà’ experience may occur. There are also several other phenomena which resemble these in various ways, but space does not permit going into them here. Those wishing to know more and explore the various aspects of déjà phenomena more deeply are referred to the excellent overviews in Neppe (1983) and Brown (2004).
IX. Déjà vu Theories
A) The Hologram Theory
Dutch psychiatrist Hermon Sno proposed the idea that memories are like holograms, meaning that you can recreate the entire three-dimensional image from any fragment of the whole. The smaller the fragment, however, the fuzzier the ultimate picture. Déjà vu, he says, happens when some detail in the environment we are currently in (a sight, sound, smell, et cetera) is similar to some remnant of a memory of our past and our brain recreates an entire scene from that fragment.
Other researchers also agree that some small piece of familiarity may be the seed that creates the déjà vu feeling. For example, you might go for a ride with a friend in an old 1964 Plymouth and have a strong déjà vu experience without actually remembering (or even being aware of the fact) that your grandfather had the same type of car and you're actually remembering riding in that car as a small child. Things like the smell and the look and feel of the seat or dashboard can bring back memories you didn't even know you had.
B) Dual Processing (or Delayed Vision)
Another theory is based on the way our brain processes new information and how it stores long- and short-term memories. Robert Efron tested an idea at the Veterans Hospital in Boston in 1963 that stands as a valid theory today. He proposed that a delayed neurological response causes déjà vu. Because information enters the processing centers of the brain via more than one path, it is possible that occasionally that blending of information might not synchronize correctly.
Efron found that the temporal lobe of the brain's left hemisphere is responsible for sorting incoming information. He also found that the temporal lobe receives this incoming information twice with a slight (milliseconds-long) delay between transmissions -- once directly and once again after its detour through the right hemisphere of the brain. If that second transmission is delayed slightly longer, then the brain might put the wrong timestamp on that bit of information and register it as a previous memory because it had already been processed. That could explain the sudden sense of familiarity.
C) "Memories" From Other Sources
This theory proposes that we have many stored memories that come from many aspects of our lives, including not only our own experiences but also movies, pictures we've seen and books we've read. We can have very strong memories of things we've read about or seen without actually experiencing, and over time, these memories may be pushed back in our minds. When in we see or experience something that is very similar to one of those memories, we might experience a feeling of déjà vu.
For example, as a child we may have seen a movie that had a scene in a famous restaurant or at a famous landmark. Then, as an adult, we visit the same location without remembering the movie, and the location appears to be very familiar to us.
X. The déjà vu experience
Below are names for some of the many ways in which the déjà experience may manifest:
déjà entendu - already heard
déjà éprouvé - already experienced
déjà fait - already done
déjà pensé - already thought
déjà raconté - already recounted
déjà senti - already felt, smelt
déjà su - already known (intellectually)
déjà trouvé - already found (met)
déjà vécu - already lived
déjà voulu - already desired
Neppe (in conjunction with Prof. B. G. Rogers, Professor of French, University of the Witwatersrand) in 1981 suggested the following additional terms:
déjà arrivé - already happened
déjà connu - already known (personal knowing)
déjà dit - already said/spoken (content of speech)
déjà gouté - already tasted
déjà lu - already read
déjà parlé - already spoken (act of speech)
déjà pressenti - already sensed
déjà rencontré - already met
déjà rêvé - already dreamt
déjà visité - already visited
Déjà rencontré appears preferable to déjà trouvé for the already met experience because it specifically relates to interpersonal situations.
XI. Studying Déjà Vu
Déjà vu is extremely difficult to study because it occurs briefly, unannounced, only in certain people, and has no witnesses or physical manifestations other than the person saying, "hey, déjà vu!" Because of this, there is little firm research and no definitive explanations. Déjà vu studies must depend on personal descriptions and recollection for data. For two centuries people have tried to come up with reasons we experience déjà vu. From philosophers, to psychologists, to paranormal experts, they've all had their theories.
Emile Boirac was a French psychic researcher who was the first to use the term déjà vu in his book, "L'Avenir des Sciences Psychiques." He did not research the phenomenon in depth, however. Sigmund Freud theorized that these experiences resulted from repressed desires or memories related to a stressful event that people could no longer access as regular memory. Scientists used this theory, called paramnesia, to explain déjà vu for a large part of the 20th century.
Over the years, many scientists ignored déjà vu completely due to its frequent association with past life experiences, ESP and alien abductions. These associations gave the study of déjà vu a bit of a stigma. Recently, researchers have set aside some of those associations and have begun putting brain imaging technology to work. Firmly placing déjà vu within the study of memory, they hope to discover more about how memories are formed, stored and retrieved.
They have since determined that the medial temporal lobe is involved in our conscious memory. Within the medial temporal lobe are the parahippocampal gyrus, the rhinal cortex and the amygdala. John D.E. Gabrieli at Stanford University found in 1997 that the hippocampus enables us to consciously recall events. He also found that the parahippocampal gyrus enables us to determine what's familiar and what isn't (and without actually retrieving a specific memory to do it).
While about 60 percent of people say they have experienced déjà vu, the rates are highest among people between the ages of 15 and 25. The upper age varies among researchers, but most agree that déjà vu experiences decrease with age. There have also been higher reported occurrences among those with higher incomes, those who tend to travel more and those with higher education levels. Active imaginations and the ability to recall dreams has also been a commonality among people who report déjà vu experiences.
Some researchers also report that the more tired or stressed you are, the more likely you are to experience déjà vu. Other researchers, however, have seen just the opposite. They report that the more refreshed and relaxed you are, the more likely you are to experience déjà vu. Obviously, the jury is still out about a lot of things related to déjà vu.
One reported finding is that the more open-minded or politically liberal a person is, the more likely they are to experience déjà vu. However, this may also mean that the more open-minded you are, the more likely you are to talk about something potentially seen as "weird," like déjà vu.
XII. Déjà Vu and Precognitive Dreams
Some researchers, including Swiss scientist Arthur Funkhouser, firmly believe that precognitive dreams are the source of many déjà vu experiences. J.W. Dunne, an aeronautical engineer who designed planes in World War II, conducted studies in 1939 using students of Oxford University. His studies found 12.7 percent of his subjects' dreams to have similarities with future events. Recent studies, including one by Nancy Sondow in 1988, have had similar results of 10 percent.
These researchers also tied evidence of precognitive dreams to déjà vu experiences that occurred anywhere from one day to eight years later. The question has been raised about why the experiences themselves are typically mundane everyday things. One explanation from Funkouser is that something more exciting is more likely to be remembered, making a déjà vu experience less likely
Dejavu
Déjà vu refers to a state wherein a person feels certain (cognitive judgment) that he or she has previously seen or experienced something that is actually being encountered for the first time. Sigmund Freud believed the feeling corresponded to the memory of an unconscious daydream.
The term first appeared in a French translation of the Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901b) as part of the discussion of the superstition that can be associated with this mysterious feeling. Freud quotes certain "psychologists," without specifying who they are. The concept falls squarely within the framework of the paramnesia extensively described by psychiatrists in France, primarily Wigan (1844) and Valentin Magnan (1893), who described systematic delirium accompanied by the illusion of doppelgängers, J. Capgras (1923), who described the illusion of doppelgangers, and Pierre Janet (1905), who described cases of false recognition.
Freud discusses the concept in terms of the psycho-pathology of everyday life (errors, slips) by removing it from the context of psychosis and by supporting it with his own self-analysis ("rapid sensations of déjà vu that I myself experienced"). He returned to it again, but within the context of therapy, in his "Fausse reconnaissance (déjà raconté) in Psycho-Analytic Treatment" (1914a), referring to a central example of the analysis of the Wolf Man. He then provided a partial summary of authors who had discussed the issue, separating them into "believers" (who thought that déjà vu was proof of a previous existence), among whom he includes Pythagoras, and "nonbelievers," who regard such events as false memories (Wigan, 1860). Freud himself assumes a different position (which he acknowledges sharing with Joseph Grasset, 1904) by believing in the reality of the representative content, but associating this with the reactivation of an older unconscious impression. He returned to the question again in terms of self-analysis at the end of his life in "A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis" (1936a).
Déjà vu is one of the "uncanny feelings" that, for Freud, play the role of hallucinations, which become more frequent and systematic during certain mental disturbances. This is the most convincing example of breaching the boundary between the normal and the pathological addressed by Freud. It involves a dissociative type of change experienced by the subject in his or her perception of things or himself. Reality appears distant, like a dream or a shadow, and it is at this point that false recognition occurs. Along with this displacement of the perceived object from the present into the past, there is a confused feeling of expectation or foreknowledge, whereby the subject is simultaneously projected into the future. For Freud this involves the replacement of some part of reality by a repressed desire (1901b). In the example cited here, a young girl replaces the perception of her wish to have seen her brother die with the sensation of having already experienced the situation (a trip to the countryside to visit some young girls whose brother is seriously ill). The topographic displacement (unconscious/conscious) is also spatio-temporal, for the memory involves the house and the girls' dresses but not the brother's illness. In "A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis," the same phenomenon is reversed since the reality of the Acropolis dissolves within the feeling of disbelief Freud experiences. Here, doubt replaces certainty; doubt is awakened by the reality of the perception but contaminates perception at the same time.
The concept of déjà vu must be compared with other analogous terms in analysis, such as déjà vécu (already experienced) and déjà raconté (already communicated). According to Freud, this paramnesia can be explained as a confusion between the intention to communicate and its realization. As with the doubt in his dream, these forms of paramnesia refer to specifically significant facts, such as the hallucination of the severed finger that the Wolf Man is convinced he has already told Freud about, when, in fact, he had only mentioned the existence of the small knife carried by his uncle. Generally speaking, paramnesia leads to a reflection on the process of remembering during therapy and on the patient's illusion of having "always known" the repressed content revealed by interpretation ("Remembering, Repeating, Working-through"). "It is by this means," Freud writes, "that the problem of analysis is resolved" (1914g).
Déjà vu touches on the whole question of forgetting as a dissociation of memory, as well as on the question of true and false from the psychoanalytic point of view. The false recognition of Norbert Harnold ("Is it a 'real' ghost?") is the true recognition of the originally invested object displaced within the context of archeology in Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's "Gradiva" (1907a [1906j]).
Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund. (1901b). The psychopathology of everyday life. SE,6.
——. (1907a [1906j]). Delusions and dreams in Jensen's "Gradiva." SE, 9: 1-95.
——. (1914a). Fausse reconnaissance ("déjà raconté") in psycho-analytic treatment. SE, 13: 199-207.
——. (1914g). Remembering, repeating, working-through (Further recommendations on the technique of psycho-analysis II). SE, 12: 147-156.
——. (1936a). A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis (an open letter to Romain Rolland on the occasion of his seventieth birthday). SE, 22, 239-248.
