Foreword to Psychology
of Déjà Vu (Professor Lewis Hurst)
It is a privilege indeed to have been asked to write
a foreword to what I regard as one of the major works
of scientific and imaginative genius of our time. Dr.
Vernon Neppe has mobilized, for the understanding of
that fascinating phenomenon on the frontiers of human
experience, déjà vu, the resources of
literature, logic, biology, psychology, psychiatry,
and neurology in an incomparable synthesis. He has pursued
his quest relentlessly by an original many-sided research
investigation of impeccable design, issuing in this,
our definitive work in the field. From one perspective,
this research may be seen as the crystallization of
Dr. Neppe`s work in placing Parapsychology on the map
scientifically in South Africa, building on the pioneer
work of Professors Arthur Bleksley, Marius Valkhoff,
and Michael Whiteman. From another angle, the present
book is characterized by rigorous logical thought issuing
in formal definitions, operational definitions, classifications
of both a normal and clinical type in relation to déjà
experience, as well as the most highly sophisticated
differential diagnosis of such entities as temporal
lobe dysfunction, temporal lobe epilepsy and schizophrenia,
that have been found to be associated with a proportion
of Neppe's déjà vu experients. The statistical
analysis of results, although non-parametric owing to
sample size, has nevertheless been conducted in a detailed
and expert manner. But it is not only from the quantitative
aspect that this study excels, but on the qualitative
side also we find a delightful range of personal portrayals
of déjà vu experiences, intriguing and
stimulating to the imagination, from such literary sources
as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Joseph Heller, Charles Dickens,
Marcel Proust and Lafcadio Hearn, as well as from Neppe's
own experimental subjects. The contributions to an understanding
of déjà vu and related phenomena from
the full range of disciplines conceivably involved,
(including psychiatry, psychology, neuro-anatomy, neuro-physiology,
neuro-chemistry, general medicine, neurology and pharmacology)
are subtly conceptualized by Neppe, and thereafter exhaustively
explored with the utmost scientific rigor and acumen
before his setting out of his original study - both
on Normal subjects (subjective paranormal non-experients
and experients) and on Neuropsychiatric categories (chiefly
temporal lobe epilepsy and schizophrenia). The clinical
elucidation of this case material is enlivened by apt
and vivid illustrative vignettes.
In transforming his doctoral thesis, intended primarily
for specialized medical readers, to this book, for perusal
also by scholars of other disciplines and the general
public comprising intelligent laymen, attracted by a
theme of such universal appeal, Dr. Neppe has gone to
great pains to promote intelligibility through a Glossary
of medical and technical terms, and readability by printing
matters of subordinate allows a unitary detail (e.g.,
the foreign terms for variants of déjà
vu) in smaller type. Moreover the statistical analysis
has been compressed, in the knowledge that the original
doctoral work can be consulted for the fuller treatment
of the data.
Neppe's main theoretical conclusion of this work merits
quotation in full - 'déjà vu is the epiphenomenon
underlying numerous different phenomenologies. This
would imply that Temporal Lobe Epileptic Déjà
Vu is associated with a specific pattern of cerebral
firing, that Schizophrenic Déjà Vu is
symptomatic of the underlying reality distortion, that
Subjective Paranormal Experience Déjà
Vu should be classified as a kind of subjective paranormal
experience with heteropsychic origins and that Associative
Déjà Vu is due to a redintegrative restricted
paramnesia mechanism, possibly learnt "as an unconscious
reassurance-type ego-defense."
Further research avenues envisaged are:
- The application of Neppe's structured questionnaire
as a projective test in schizophrenia.
- The induction of déjà vu (or restricted
paramnesias) in temporal lobe epileptics, subjective
paranormal experients and schizophrenics.
- A prospective study on subjects who frequently
experience déjà vu.
- Extension of the investigation to larger populations
particularly of normal subjects.
- Transcultural studies of the phenomenon.
- Psychopharmacological trials on déjà
vu in temporal lobe epileptics and schizophrenics.
- Study of the implications of the occurrence of
déjà vu in affective illness, implying
less specificity for schizophrenia.
- Prospective examination of frequency of déjà
vu in relation to his setting out of dream recall,
in view of the preliminary impression from the present
study of an association.
- Further study is necessary to ascertain whether
there is a correlation of déjà vu with
age, and what its prevalence is in children. This
book describes the two youngest cases in the literature
and raises the question as to whether 5 is the lowest
age limit for déjà vu, as providing
the cognitive and affective developmental prerequisite.
A final synthetic formulation of Neppe's achievement
with its profound theoretical and practical potential
enshrined in this book, is that his classification of
déjà vu experience based on the medical
model, allows a unitary conceptualization of diagnosis,
follow-up and prognosis as well as incidence, pathogenesis,
etiology, clinical features and for the fuller response
to treatment.
Dr. Neppe concludes in terms of the imagery of Plato's
Allegory of the Cave, with true philosophical and scientific
humility asking the questions: How many shadows have
been perceived in this research? Has this study just
looked at an epiphenomenon?
20 June 1982
Professor Lewis A. Hurst
BA B.Sc. MB ChB PhD (Cape Town)
MD (Pretoria) FRCPsych (London)
Professor Emeritus (Psychiatry)
Hon. Research Professorial Fellow (Genetics)
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
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