ABSTRACT
The inexplicable feeling of familiarity conjured up by something that is met for the first time, as if it had been known already for a long time or previously experienced in exactly similar fashion, is explained by Freud as due to forgotten or repressed day-dreams that dealt with a similar situation. In connection with this I was in many cases able to trace back the ‘déjà vu ’ to nocturnal dreams from the previous 2 or from a long-past night. 3 In the following poem by Hebbel—notable for other reasons as well—I find the latter explanation. (From the poems of the years 1857–1863 in Friedr. Hebbel’s collected works, vol. ii. p. 12 ff., Leipzig, Max Hesses Verlag.)
