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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
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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 

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