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PSI RESEARCH
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DÉJÀ VU
Vernon M. Neppe, The Psychology of Deja Vu:
Have I Been Here Before? Johannensburg, South
Africa: Witwatersrand University Press, 1983.
In the déjà vu experience the individual has an uncanny
feeling of familiarity which is inappropriate in that
context.
One of the most common forms of the experience
involves the impression that a particular place seems
familiar, yet the experient knows that he/she has never been
there before. Some writers have been inclined to classify
such an experience as inherently parapsychological. This
view is rather presumptive, but certainly it is legitimate
to countenance parapsychological mechanisms as hypothetical
accounts of the experience. For example, in some cases the
feeling of familiarity conceivably could stem from an un-
recalled prior instance of precognition, extrasensory
perception or out-of-body experience, or from largely in-
accessible memories of a previous incarnation. Conversely,
if the bases of deja vu are appreciated, they might permit
greater insight into and clarification of certain
subjectively parapsychological experiences such as
spontaneous precognition and reincarnation memories. In
these respects, therefore, the déjà vu experience is of some
interest to psi researchers.
Vernon Neppe's book The Psychology of Deja Vu should
find a receptive audience among readers of Psi Research and
more specifically among parapsychological researchers.
Although there is a sizeable literature on déjà vu (as is
attested by Neppe's quite extensive bibliography), there has
been meager theoretical and empirical progress on the
phenomenon in recent years. This volume is a welcome
endeavor to redress the situation and indeed it is said to
be the first book (as distinct from journal articles and
unpublished theses) devoted wholly to déjà vu.
The initial task undertaken by Neppe in his monograph
is the analysis of definitional issues. It is clear, for
example, that the inappropriate feeling of familiarity is
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not specific to visual impressions as would be implied by
the term déjà vu (literally, "already seen"). Neppe
proceeds to list a score of terms, including déjà entendu
("already heard") and déjà rencontre ("already met"), which
might be employed to differentiate among the contexts of a
more general phenomenon. These terms do have merit in
alerting researchers not to limit their inquiry to purely
visual impressions of places and events, as has been done so
frequently in past investigations. At the same time it is
apparent that there is an unfortunate, if unwitting,
tendency in the literature to generalize the expression
"deja vu" to any sensory modality and context, and thus the
adoption of a broad term such as "déjà experience" is
warranted.
In this vein Neppe (p. 3) elects to define the déjà vu
experience as "any subjectively inappropriate impression of
familiarity of a present experience with an undefined past."
With its primary emphasis upon the element of inappropriate
familiarity, this definition may strike some readers as
casting the conceptual net a little too widely.
For
example, the definition does not assume that the particular
situation has never before been encountered by the
individual; that is, the experience need not be erroneous,
but simply evocative of the strange sense of familiarity
which is not characteristic of the person's usual impression
of the situation. Possibly just as problematic is Neppe's
effort to distinguish between precognitive and deja
experiences. Thus, in his view, if the experient can recall
a dream which corresponds in content to the present
experience, the latter should not be regarded as a déja
experience, but as a precognized one. If, on the other
hand, the experient has a vague idea that he/she once had
such a dream but cannot be more precise in the recollection
of its content or of the occasion of its occurrence, the
present experience would be accepted by Neppe as falling in
the deja category. In its dependence upon the precision of
the experient's memory, this taxonomic differentiation is in
some ways an arbitrary one, but it is nonetheless necessary
at this early stage of research if all possible causal
factors (including that of "forgetting") are to be
canvassed.
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PSI RESEARCH
Neppe then reviews the qualitative characteristics of
the deja experience. This section is systematic and
thorough, but also surprisingly brief, again drawing
attention to the paucity of our knowledge of the correlates
and other features of the experience phenomenology.
Theories of the mechanism underlying the phenomenon also are
addressed; generally the coverage here is far too condensed
and inclined to presume much of the general reader.
Cognitive psychologists also may be disappointed to find no
account of the experience in terms of the distinction
between episodic and semantic memory systems.
The major part of the monograph is devoted to a
detailed summary of Neppe's PhD (Med.) survey of déjà
experiences among epileptics, schizophrenics, people who
acknowledge subjectively paranormal experiences, and
otherwise "normal" individuals. The representativeness of
each of his samples is highly doubtful, and while Neppe
concedes this, he applies to very small sets of data
statistical tests which presume random sampling, and engages
in detailed discussion of the implications of these data for
deja typology, theory, and clinical practice. The
limitations of the research in this respect cannot lightly
be dismissed. Be that as it may, as a pilot study Neppe's
empirical work has made two major contributions to the
field. First, it has raised the possibility that the deja
experience is not a homogeneous phenomenon but might instead
be reducible to several distinct "syndromes," each with its
own peculiar etiology. (That any of these syndromes
correspond to the ones identified by Neppe remains to be
demonstrated conclusively.) Second, Neppe has performed an
invaluable service to future researchers of the déjà
experience by operationalizing various specific aspects of
the experience and its potential correlates, and by also
developing interview schedules and questionnaires to gather
information pertinent to these aspects. For these contribu-
tions The Psychology of Deja Vu will come to be recognized
as essential reading for psychologists and parapsychologists
contemplating empirical study in the area.
At a technical level the book is indexed with
reasonable thoroughness, has an excellent bibliography, and
is relatively free from typographical errors. There are
some oddities in expression which possibly may reflect the
book's South African idiom, and the reliance upon
abbreviations and the enumeration of points tend to be
excessive. Despite its declared intention to make the
material comprehensible to "the intelligent layman" (and
presumably to the intelligent laywoman), much of the book
still reads like a doctoral thesis.
In summary, Neppe's monograph is hardly as claimed in
Professor Lewis Hurt's foreword, "one of the major works of
scientific and imaginative genius of our time" (p. xi), but
nonetheless it is a substantial publication on its chosen
topic and will be appreciated as such by researchers.
Dr. Harvey Irwin
Department of Psychology
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351 Australia
*
THE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE
Bruce Greyson & Charles Flynn, eds.
The
Near-Death Experience: Problems, Prospects, Per-
spectives.
Springfield, IL: Thomas, 1984; 289 pp.
At last there is a comprehensive textbook available in
the field of near-death experiences. This book represents a
significant departure from all of its predecessors in that
it covers the gamut of topics from theory to practice. It
will not be for everyone, nor was it intended to be. The
textbook pricing structure alone will drive off the casual
buyer. Still, it meets a previously unfulfilled need to
support the academic community with a quality text address-
ing this aspect of the burgeoning field of thanatology. Of
value to scholars will be the comprehensive bibliographies
that accompany many of the articles.
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