Definitions

Déjà-vu : l’illusion de la répetition d’une expérience passée imaginaire

Wikipedia: Le déjà-vu, ou paramnésie (du grec para, à côté, et mnésis, mémoire, formé sur amnésis), est la sensation d’avoir déjà été témoin ou d’avoir déjà vécu une situation présente, accompagné d’une sensation d’irréalité, d’étrangeté. Cette impression, qui peut être déplaisante, touche à peu près 7 personnes sur 10. Selon le psychologue suisse Arthur Funkhouser, on peut en distinguer trois types différents : le déjà vécu, le déjà senti et le déjà visité1.

Wikipedia: Déjà vu, from French, literally “already seen”, is the phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced had been experienced in the past.
The psychologist Edward B. Titchener in his book 1928 A Textbook of Psychology, explained déjà vu as caused by a person having a brief glimpse of an object or situation, before the brain has completed “constructing” a full conscious perception of the experience. Such a “partial perception” then results in a false sense of familiarity. The explanation that has mostly been accepted 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 false impression that an experience is “being recalled”. This explanation is supported 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 uncertain or believed to be impossible.

 

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