Deja Vecu and Deja Visite Similarities and Differences: Initial Results from an Online Investigation

It has been posited that the experience commonly called 'deja vu' can be subdivided into several types of deja experience. For the past nine years an internet questionnaire has collected data about what are called 'deja vecu' (already lived through) and 'deja visite' (already visited) experiences. It is clear from the data that deja vecu experiences occur more frequently than do deja visite ones. Further analysis of the data has shown that deja vecu experiences were rated as being significantly longer than those of deja visite. In addition, the mean age of the first experience was lower for deja vecu experiences as compared with deja visite ones. Moreover, positive emotions outweighed negative ones for both experiences while both tended to have sudden onsets. More deja vecu experiences were said to occur in a state of hyper-alertness, tended to be more comprehensive, were remembered in greater detail, and involved precognition more often than occurred in instances of deja visite. It appears one may be justified in considering these as two separate experiences. In the future, it would be desirable to conduct representative studies to obtain information about the frequencies of occurrence of the various types of deja experience in the general population and in-depth analyses regarding their situational context and content.