If you have the peculiar feeling you've read this before, don't be alarmed. It's probably just déjà vu. Déjà vu is the peculiar feeling that you’ve experienced something before, while at the same time knowing that you haven’t. You visit a friend’s apartment and have the overwhelming sense you’ve been here before, but that can’t be the case. This is the first time you’ve ever visited this city. Still, the feeling may be so intense — and so real — that you almost know what you’ll find when you walk into the kitchen. Experts estimate roughly two out of three people have had the experience at least once.
The French term déjà vu, which translates into English as “already seen,” was coined in 1876 by French philosopher and psychical researcher Émile Boirac. But people had the experience long before it had a name. Over the centuries, humans often took déjà vu as evidence of what they already believed. Sigmund Freud looked at déjà vu and saw repressed desires. Carl Jung thought the experience was related to the collective unconscious. Plato described something similar to déjà vu as evidence of past lives. And of course, there’s the modern Hollywood-hatched idea that déjà vu results from a glitch in the Matrix. It’s not hard to understand why déjà vu got a reputation for being a little woo-woo and supernatural.
