déjà vu

n.

1. Psychology. The illusion of having already experienced something actually being experienced for the first time.
2. 1. An impression of having seen or experienced something before: Old-timers watched the stock-market crash with a distinct sense of déjà vu.
   2. Dull familiarity; monotony: the déjà vu of the tabloid headlines.

[French : déjà, already + vu, seen.]

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.

—SOPHIEDE MIJOLLA-MELLOR

A French term used by psychical researchers to characterize the feeling people sometimes have that some scene or experience in the present also occurred in the past. Déjà vu (already seen) is often coupled with déjà entendu (already heard). Through the years, many have related the feelings of déjà vu to the phenomenon of astral projection or out-of-the-body travel, when individuals apparently visit a distant place in an astral or etheric body during sleep. Déjà vu is also associated with fulfillment of a prior premonition of a forthcoming event.

More recently, déjà vu has been connected to experiences of reincarnation, when a feeling of prior knowledge is so strong that people feel sure it must have come from a former incarnation. In a celebrated case in India, a little girl named Shanti Devi, born in Delhi in 1926, claimed that she had lived elsewhere in a former birth, and even named the city. When taken there, she correctly identified the house, family, and other circumstantial details.

Feelings of déjà vu are rarely evidential or even reliable. Scenes in the present may only appear familiar because they contain some element connected with a past experience and re-activate the sensation of familiarity. Psychologists have characterized the phenomenon of false remembering as "postidentifying paramnesia."

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

'It happened on my first visit to Paris. I was walking along one of those little streets in Montmartre, when I suddenly had the feeling that I'd been there before. It was all happening again ... .'

This is a characteristic account of déjà vu (literally 'already seen') — the experience that one has witnessed some new situation or episode on a previous occasion. Perception of the scene is accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity. Usually the sensation lasts only for a few seconds, but in some pathological cases it may be much more prolonged or, indeed, continuous. It is often accompanied by a conviction that one knows what is about to happen next — 'When I reached the square, I knew what I was about to see ....'

The déjà vu experience is often reported by patients suffering from psychiatric disorders. It is known to be associated with temporal lobe lesions, and is one of the 'dreamy state' experiences characteristic of focal epilepsy. But the phenomenon seems also to be experienced occasionally by the majority of normal people. Most commonly it occurs in youth, or under conditions of fatigue or heightened sensitivity.

Understandably, the sensation of having previously experienced the event in question suggests to the individual that he is recalling a previous occurrence. The present event is taken to be a 'second' occurrence; mystification and interest are thus focused upon the 'first' one. As the crucial aspect of déjà vu is that the individual knows that he has not in fact previously experienced the event, lay explanations often posit psychic or magical processes. Such 'explanations' usually attribute unusual talents or powers to the individual concerned. Thus, one obvious 'explanation' is that the event has been 'revealed' to the individual prior to its occurrence. In that case he has demonstrated precognition, and is the fortunate possessor of the 'sixth sense' or the power of prophecy. More commonly, lay explanations make the presumption that the event has, in fact, occurred on a previous occasion, and focus on how the individual could have gained his knowledge of that 'first' occurrence. A common explanation is that the individual experienced the 'first' event in a previous life. His déjà vu sensation may thus be taken as evidence for reincarnation. An associated view is that the 'first' event was witnessed by the individual but through the eyes of another person. He is therefore taken to possess telepathic gifts. The other witness may be hypothesized to have existed at another period in time. In that case the present individual is presumed to have mediumistic powers. A somewhat more subtle hypothesis is that the 'first' experience took place in a dream, a proposition that accords well with the dreamlike quality of the déjà vu experience itself. The individual himself may feel, not that he has previously witnessed the event, but that he has previously foretold it. But there is never any evidence of his actual foretelling, nor does he recall ever having done so. Thus he may speculate that the events were revealed to him in a dream, which would explain his failure to recall consciously his presentiment in the interim. Technically, this feeling is a pseudo-presentiment, so termed because the belief is held only at the moment that he witnesses the event. A number of serious writers have maintained this 'dream' hypothesis.

As noted above, the last four explanations presuppose that déjà vu is attached to a second experiencing of the situation in question — in other words, that the individual is remembering. Several psychological and psychiatric authorities have also taken this view, classifying déjà vu as an example of paramnesia. For them the question becomes one not of how the individual could remember something that he has not experienced before, but of why he should think he has not experienced it before. The obvious assumption is that the original experience aroused distress in the individual, so that its recall would prove painful to him. The standard psychoanalytic explanation of déjà vu is that the original experience has been repressed and so, by definition, is no longer accessible to memory. Any repetition of the experience cannot elicit conscious recall of the original occurrence. But it does constitute a 'reminder' to the ego, and it is this that is reflected in the déjà vu feeling.

A more prosaic explanation of déjà vu is that, although the overall situation is novel, a number of its component features have in fact been experienced before. For example, the observer may know for certain that he has never walked along this particular street before — indeed, he may never previously have visited the town or even the country in question. But there are many features which all streets have in common, and it is the combination of these specifics which brings some familiarity to this newly visited street. However, this suggestion applies more directly to what has been termed 'restricted paramnesia'. (An everyday example of 'restricted paramnesia' is the frustrating experience of being unable to identify a person whom one knows but in some other context.) There are pronounced phenomenological differences between the preoccupying puzzlement which accompanies a restricted paramnesia and the déjà vu experience. In the former, one is well aware of those aspects of the situation which have been experienced previously (such as the other person's facial features, expression, and voice). The perplexity arises from the inability to reconstruct the totality of the previous experience (for example, the circumstances and context of previous encounters). In déjà vu, the whole of the new experience seems familiar, and so does the ensuing progression of events. Typically, the paramnesia experience is described in terms such as: 'I knew that I had met him before, but for the life of me I couldn't remember who he was ... .' Whereas déjà vu is described as: 'I felt that I had lived through it all before, but knew that I hadn't.'

Two other suggestions should be mentioned. The first one, once held by psychologists, stresses the affective component and classifies déjà vu as a paradoxical emotional experience. The argument would be that the sense of familiarity has reference, not to the characteristics of the situation, but to the observer's feelings. It is postulated that these are a carry-over of the emotional state associated with the preceding situation. The second suggestion is of more recent origin and focuses upon neurological function. Here the argument is that the two hemispheres of the brain may temporarily lose synchronicity. Thus the anomalous feeling of familiarity may be due to the fact that one side of the brain is receiving input a fraction of a second after the other.

A more fruitful psychological approach to the consideration of déjà vu may be to de-emphasize the recall aspect, with its presumption of a 'previous event', and approach the experience in terms of its other name: fausse reconnaissance (false recognition). Instead of 'Why is the observer unable to remember the previous situation?' the question now becomes: 'Why does the observer feel that he recognizes the present situation?' This, indeed, was the approach taken by Pierre Janet, who was one of the first psychologists to identify, describe, and analyse the experience. He considered déjà vu to be one outcome of the obsessional incapacity for active and adequate response to the pressures of reality. The essence of déjà vu, he suggested, is not the 'affirmation of the past'; it is the 'negation of the present'. It is not a question of how the observer remembers a previous event, but how he perceives the present one.

At first sight, the classification of our topic as an anomaly of recognition rather than one of recall does not seem to offer any easier road to explanation. Certainly, conventional laboratory studies of recognition would seem to offer nothing which might throw light upon the déjà vu experience. However, consideration of the views of F. C. Bartlett, as presented in his classic work Remembering, may yield some clues. Bartlett's central point, which has been re-emphasized by contemporary cognitive theorists, was that long-term memory is a dynamic, constructive process. We do not recall an event in its original form, nor even in a merely attenuated version. We reconstruct it, drawing upon the schemata or cognitive structures into which the perceived components of the event were organized. Thus, what is reconstructed during recall or reproduction shows not only omissions and abbreviations but elaborations and distortions.

On each occasion that we recall any given event, further distortions or elaborations are introduced. It could be said that in a series of recollections we are not recalling the original event at all, but our last recollection of it. The longer the series the more the remembered version will differ from the original, because each further recollection will involve distortions of distortions and elaborations of elaborations. If this line of argument (for which there is considerable experimental as well as observational evidence) is applied to the examination of recognition, some interesting implications emerge. Basically, recognition involves the acceptance of a 'good fit' or match of currently perceived material with recalled, imagined material. The better the level of match, the more pronounced will be the accompanying sense of familiarity. In the case of personal experiences, the familiarity includes an added dimension of personal identification. Clearly, the more often an original event has been recalled, the more modifications will have been introduced, and the weaker the subjective fit between our current recollection and any representation of the actual original material. Conversely, the sense of familiarity may now be evoked by the perception of material which differs considerably from the actual original, given that the differences are in line with the distortions and elaborations present in our recollection. If we have good reason to believe that it would be quite impossible for us to have actually experienced this new material previously, then our feeling of familiarity is naturally highly perplexing. It may well be that this perplexity, resulting from the discrepancy between objective knowledge and subjective feeling, constitutes what is termed déjà vu.

In that case, why is the experience so rare? Perhaps the problem is not why déjà vu occurs, but why it does not occur more frequently. There are several possible answers. One is that perhaps it does occur commonly, but that we register it only under certain conditions. But at the same time, it is probable that there are relatively few occasions when we can be objectively certain that we have not experienced the criterion situation previously. A first visit to a geographic area is one such example. Other cases where the total situation may be labelled emphatically as a personal 'first time' event are often ones of a heightened emotive nature, where we are likely to be more sensitive to our subjective state and more vulnerable to feelings of anxiety and perplexity. It should be noted that while we may be acutely aware that a given situation is a personal 'first', we have almost certainly experienced it at second hand, through descriptions, literary accounts, or films. Perhaps the obvious examples are marriage ceremonies, job interviews, and funerals. And it is of interest that, after the 'strange town' example, these are the very situations in which people most commonly report experiencing déjà vu.

Purely psychological explanations of the kind discussed are hardly sufficient when the déjà vu experience is part of an epileptic aura. In this situation one might presume that the spontaneous electrical discharge in an area of the brain (the temporal lobe) particularly concerned with memory has reactivated a distant memory from the memory store, which is now perceived as something the patient has previously experienced — as, indeed, he probably has. Penfield's brain-stimulation studies on patients undergoing neurosurgical operations might be considered as supportive of such an explanation of the déjà vu phenomenon, at least in cases when it is associated with temporal lobe epilepsy.

(Published 1987)

— Graham F. Reed

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Déjà vu is an eerie experience in which there is a feeling that a completely unknown place is familiar, as if one has been there before, or that a new situation has been experienced before. It can characterize events, dreams, thoughts, statements, emotions, meetings, and so on. The expression itself is French for "already seen" and was coined by E. Letter Boirac in 1876. No English expression has quite the same connotations.

Déjà vu is a widespread experience. A poll conducted in 1986 reported that 67 percent of Americans had experienced the phenomenon. Other studies indicate that déjà vu occurs more often to females than males, and more often to younger than older individuals.

There are many theories that attempt to explain déjà vu. In 1884, for instance, it was theorized that one brain hemisphere registered information slightly sooner than the other hemisphere, and that this explained the experience. Other researchers have postulated similar partial delay mechanisms, such as the hypothesis that the subconscious receives information before the conscious mind. These biological explanations have not been demonstrated to actually be a part of the human physiology. A more widely accepted hypothesis, which certainly accounts for at least some such "already seens," is that the new places or experiences that we encounter during déjà vu simply resemble familiar places or experiences.

Another explanation embraces the notion of a collective unconscious, through which one is in touch with the universal experience of the human race. From this frame of reference, a déjà vu experience may simply represent a resonance between a current experience and one of the archetypes in the collective unconscious. Of particular significance are explanations that postulate that at least some déjà vu experiences are indistinct memories of past lifetimes.

Yet another explanation is that déjà vu is a form of psychic experience related to certain dream experiences. Thus, the new but seemingly familiar places we encounter may be, for example, places we visited during out-of-body experiences while asleep. Dreams may also be precognitive and experienced as déjà vu when what was precognized occurs or is encountered.

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Dansk (Danish)
idioms:

• déjà vu    déja-vu

Français (French)
idioms:

• déjà vu    déjà vu

Deutsch (German)
idioms:

• déjà vu    déjà vu (Eindruck des Nochmalerlebens)

Italiano (Italian)
già

idioms:

• déjà vu    già visto

Português (Portuguese)
idioms:

• déjà vu    déjà vu (já visto)

Español (Spanish)
idioms:

• déjà vu    sensación de haber experimentado antes algo que se presenta por primera vez

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - återupplevelse

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