Week Four: Literature Review #1

   

A case study shows that the main contributors
to increasing deja vu frequency are awareness
of the phenomenon, but also distress caused by
its occurrence. A test subject helped to prove this
theory in an experiment summarized by Christine
Wells and her colleagues.

     For my first literature review, I decided to delve straight into the strongest connection between theoretical research and real-life: my primary case study. This research journal article, titled "Persistent Psychogenic Deja Vu: A Case Study," begins to investigate a possible correlation between increased anxiety levels and increased frequencies in deja vu experiences. As a result, a new approach to explaining the phenomenon of false recollection may stem from research focused on sample groups of subjects without conventional brain biology. The person used for analysis is a British man in his early twenties who reports a very high amount of deja vu experiences have occurred in his daily life for the past few years. In relation to this deja vu, the subject told researchers that his levels of anxiety have risen; the constant feelings of familiarity plaguing his daily tasks put his mind into a very tense state. The 23-year-old had a physically normal brain, but faced the psychological issues of depersonalization and high levels of anxiety. Christine E Wells and others conducted this study by making observations of the subject's medical history and struggles with deja vu over a course of three years (from 2007-2010), collecting data primarily in order to track the man's history and attempted diagnoses for his repeated episodes.

    After tracking the subject's history of investigating his own experiences, the authors of this case study preformed their own experiment with a control group of participants within the same age range as the focal point of the report. Of the total pool of participants, the study found that eight had some sort of familiarity with the phenomenon, and "of the eight who had heard of déjà vu, only three had experienced it in the past month: two, three and 12 times. Of interest, the participant who reported approximately 12 déjà vu experiences within the past month scored highly on all subscales of the DASS, and his anxiety score was rated ‘extremely severe’, although he did not report that déjà vu impacted on his daily life" (Wells et al.). The striking similarities between the most-frequent experiencers of the phenomenon suggest that there may be some significant connection between anxiety levels and deja vu occurrences. Furthermore, in my own research, I may link increased anxiety levels with increased subconscious awareness of the phenomenon occurring, since feelings of anxiety are persistently reminding the experiencer of what is currently occurring, or what is likely to occur in the future (possibly a relapse of deja vu itself).

    An in-depth analysis of the experimental results allowed the study to conclude that their case was, in fact, aware of the constant occurrences of deja vu. What is most important, though, is the expansion made for this conclusion by the writer of this journal entry: "Our case is aware of the abnormal familiarity in his memory, and is in fact greatly distressed by it. This suggests two dimensions along which déjà vu experiences can vary: awareness and distress. In this psychogenic case, our patient is similarly aware of the unreality of his experiences and they are constantly accompanied or caused by pathological levels of anxiety" (Wells et al.). This theory, stated by the scientific professionals behind this study, is a concrete addition to my research paper--by concluding that the limiting factors of deja vu are "awareness and distress," the study has laid the foundation for my cross-analysis between the Jungian theory of synchronicity and the subconscious causes of deja vu. With an experimentally-proven basis of fact, the answer to my research question becomes much more applicable to real-life situations, as many with anxiety levels may interpret their own recollections of false memory and constantly wonder as to why it occurs so often in their mind.

    Another great quote from this source that would be helpful in my writing states, "Unlike other patients with chronic déjà vu (for example, in dementia), [the case] is fully aware of the false nature of his déjà vu and this presumably leads to his intact recognition memory performance. We suggest that his persistent déjà vu is psychogenic and conclude that déjà vu should be further studied in psychiatric disorders" (Wells et al.). This quote shows that the answer to deja vu is still open-ended, and that there are many valid explanations for this phenomenon. This allows myself as the writer to create more open interpretations about the causes deja vu in order to analyze the experience in a Jungian lens. 

    This journal piece is relevant because it not only builds a pathway for comparison between two ideas, but is also written by a credible source. The leader of this study is Christine E. Wells, an accomplished professor who has multiple scientific journals posted on scientific databases as well as on the Google Scholar search engine. Wells is a member of the Department of Psychology, Sociology and Politics, at Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom. Some important key terms used in Wells' and her collaborators' text include:

1. chronic deja vu - deja vu that occurs consistently and becomes debilitating to the experiencer

2. metacognitively competent - having a sound-enough mind in order to recognize your own surroundings and understand the true scope of your own actions vs. your own imagination

3. awareness and distress - the two main factors determining the volume of experiences faced by those who experience deja vu; being aware increases frequency initially, but becoming distressed as a result of occurrences may perpetuate the situation even further from roots of anxiety in the subconscious mind

Citation:

Wells, C., Moulin, C., Ethridge, P., Illman, N., Davies, E., & Zeman, A. (2014). Persistent psychogenic déjà vu: a case report. Journal of Medical Case Reports, 8(1), 414–414. https://doi.org/10.1186/1752-1947-8-414

Link to directly access (required RUID login):

https://jmedicalcasereports.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-1947-8-414