French words often sound pleasant, one might say, literally caress the ear. And after repeated use in glamorous sources, they become even more attractive. But beautiful words often hide a bad meaning. Consider the French expression “deja vu,” what does this mean?
Life examples
The term déjà vu is literally “already seen”. Those who are familiar with this feeling describe it as a shocking feeling of recognizing something, which in principle should not be familiar.
For example, this is your first time in England. You look around the cathedral and it suddenly seems to you that you have already visited this place. Or maybe you are discussing politics with friends and you suddenly realize that this is not the first time - the same friends, the same dinner, the same topic. And the feeling is very intrusive.
Why?
Deja vu - what is it? The phenomenon is quite complex, and there are quite a few theories of the occurrence of this phenomenon. For example, the Swiss Arthur Funkhauser considers the phenomenon itself to be very heterogeneous. That is, depending on the characteristics of the manifestation of deja vu, several varieties of the phenomenon can be distinguished. Only in this case can the phenomenon be interpreted. The first example described should be called déjà visite, already visited. And the second is déjà vecu (previously experienced).
Epilepsy is not glamorous
Almost 70 percent of the world's population claim that at least once in their life they have experienced one form of deja vu.
What does it mean? Most of the experience in this area are young people from 15 to 25 years old. It seems that deja vu is not real, most likely, just the influence of the suggestion of popular culture. Can conclusions be drawn about previous lives? Not everything regarding the phenomenon is so connected with mysticism. Frequent deja vu is a clinically proven symptom of epilepsy of the temporal lobes of the brain. So before discussing your experiences with strangers, make sure there are no psychiatrists among them. But seriously, this is considered a symptom only with frequent occurrence. In patients with epilepsy, it appears during an attack between individual seizures. So there is no particular romance in deja vu. What is it in your case, only a specialist can figure it out, but if you don’t notice any oddities besides this, then you should not contact psychiatrists.
About theories more
Since deja vu happens both in healthy and in patients, the reasons are very heatedly discussed. Some psychoanalysts believe that this is just a fantasy, a way a person draws attention to himself.
Others believe that this is a distinction between the brain of the past and the present, resulting from a temporary or permanent malfunction. There are also proponents of the theory of many lives that explain deja vu as memories of past lives. Jung's supporters will talk about interaction with the collective unconscious, science fiction - about parallel universes. Modern scientific evidence is not enough to give a clear explanation.
To summarize. What does the word deja vu mean? A special form of human experience when the unseen is taken for the seen. There is a lot of hypothesis, there is a connection with mental illnesses, nature is not completely clear.