ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the popular and historical theories of deja vu formation, and moves onto contemporary scientific theories. Although the psychoanalytic theories no longer offer much to memory explanations of deja vu, the idea that déjà vu is related to dreaming is something that warrants further explanation. There is nothing particularly troublesome for a memory account of deja vu in the idea that previously dreamed material leads to feelings of familiarity. In an early article on memory and unconscious processes Jacoby and Whitehouse examined false recognition influenced by unconscious perception. This article is notable for citing Titchener's paramnesia as an illusion of memory that is produced by "a disjunction of processes that are normally held together in a conscious present", which is held by many to be a description of déjà vu, as explained by Jacoby and Whitehouse.
