Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T07:51:52.318Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Art Imitates Life: Déjà vu Experiences in Prose and Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Herman N. Sno ,
Don H. Linszen  and
Frans De Jonghe
Herman N. Sno*
Affiliation:
Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic, Academic Medical Centre, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Don H. Linszen
Affiliation:
University Department of Psychiatry, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Frans De Jonghe
Affiliation:
University Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
*
∗Correspondence
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The déjà vu experience is a subjective phenomenon that has been described in many novels and poems. Here we review over 20 literary descriptions. These accounts are consistent with the data obtained from psychiatric literature, including various phenomenological, aetiological and psychopathogenetic aspects of the déjà vu experience. The explanations, explicitly formulated by creative authors, include reincarnation, dreams, organic factors and unconscious memories. Not infrequently, an association with defence or organic factors is demonstrable on the basis of psychoanalytic or clinical psychiatric interpretation. The authors recommend that psychiatrists be encouraged to overstep the limits of psychiatric literature and read prose and poetry as well.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 160 , Issue 4 , April 1992 , pp. 511 - 518
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1992 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arlow, J. A. (1959) The structure of the déjà vu experience. Journal of the American Psychoanalytical Association, 7, 611–631.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baudry, F. (1984) An essay on method in applied psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 53, 551–581.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baudry, F. (1990) Character in fiction and fiction in character. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 59, 370–397.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bernlef, J. (1984) Out of Mind. Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Redwood Burn Ltd.Google Scholar
Couperus, L. (1892) Ecstasy. A Study of Happiness. London: Henry & Co.Google Scholar
Crosby, D. (1970) Déjà Vu. New York: Guerilla Music.Google Scholar
Crosby, D. & Gottlieb, C. G. (1988) Long Time Gone: The Autobiography of David Crosby. London: Mandarin Paperbacks.Google Scholar
De Lemartine, M. A. (1835) Souvenirs, Impressions Pensées et Paysages Pendant Un Voyage en Orient 1832–1834. Oeuvres Completes, Volume 5. Paris: Charles Gosselin (1850).Google Scholar
Dickens, C. (1846) Pictures from Italy and American notes. In The Works of Charles Dickens, deel XXIV. London: Coxton Publishing (1882).Google Scholar
Dickens, C. (1849) The Personal History of David Copperfield. London: Penguin Books (1985)Google Scholar
Dworkin, S. (1985) Desperately Seeking Susan: The Novel (Based on a Screenplay by L. Barish). New York: Harmony Books.Google Scholar
Efron, R. (1963) Temporal perception, aphasia and déjà vu. Brain, 86, 403–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freud, S. (1936) A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume XXII (ed. Strachey, J.). London: Hogarth Press Ltd.Google Scholar
Goncharov, I. A. (1859) Oblomov. New York: Penguin Books (1980).Google Scholar
Hardy, T. (1873) A Pair of Blue Eyes. London: MacMillan London Limited (1981).Google Scholar
Hawthorne, N. (1863) Our Old Home: a Series of English Sketches. Ohio: Ohio State University Press (1970).Google Scholar
Heller, J. (1955) Catch-22. London: Corgi Books (1985).Google Scholar
Kaplan, D. M. (1988) The psychoanalysis of art: some ends, some means. Journal of the American Psychoanalytical Association, 36, 259–293.Google Scholar
Lalande, A. (1893) Des paramnésies. Revue Philosophique, 36, 485–497.Google Scholar
Neppe, V. M. (19983) The Psychology of Déjà Vu: Have I Been Here Before? Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.Google Scholar
Oberndorf, C. P. (1941) Erroneous recognition. Psychiatric Quarterly, 15, 316–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ouspensky, P. D. (1900) Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. London: Faber & Faber (1947).Google Scholar
Percy, W. (1966) The Last Gentleman. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.Google Scholar
Pickpord, R. W. (1940) Rossetti's “Sudden Light” as an experience of déjà vu. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 19, 192–200.Google Scholar
Pickpord, R. W. (1944) Déjà vu in Proust and Tolstoy. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 25, 155–165.Google Scholar
Proust, M. (1919) Remembrance of Things Past. Volume 4. Within a Budding Grove, Part Two: Place-Names: The Place. London: Chatto & Windus (1949).Google Scholar
Rodgers, R. & Hart, L. (1937) Where or when. In Babes in Arms. Winona: Chappell & Co, Inc.Google Scholar
Rossetti, D. G. (1854) Collected Works. London (1886).Google Scholar
Scott, W. (1890) The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, Volume II. Edinburgh: D. Douglas.Google Scholar
Scott, W. (1815) Guy Mannering or The Astrologer. Paris: Baudry's Foreign Library (1831).Google Scholar
Singer, I. B. (1961) Jachid and Jechidah. Short Friday and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (1968)Google Scholar
Sno, H. N. & Linszen, D. H. (1990) The déjà vu experience: remembrance of things past? American Journal of Psychiatry, 147, 1587–1595.Google Scholar
Tennyson, A. (1833) To – (As when with downcast eyes). In The Complete Poetical Works of Tennyson. Boston: Mifflin (1898).Google Scholar
Tolstoy, L. (1852) Childhood, Boyhood and Youth. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.Google Scholar
Tolstoy, L. (1859) War and Peace, Volume III. Glasgow: Glasgow University Press.Google Scholar
Wordsworth, W. & Coleridge, S. T. (1800) Lyrical Ballads (eds Brett, R. L. & Jones, A. R.). London: Methuen and Co (1965).Google Scholar
Zangwill, O. L. (1944) A case of paramnesia in Nathaniel Hawthorne. Character and Personality, 13, 246–260.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.