What Is Jamais Vu And How Is It Different From Déjà Vu?

Memory is a cognitive ability, a set of processes that allow us to learn, remember and work at the mental level with our own identity. However, mnesic processes are not a perfect gear, and this explains why distortions of memory appear. One of these distortions, also called paramnesias or parapraxias, is the jamais vu .

The jamais vu has to do with knowing and remembering certain situations, but not experiencing any sense of familiarity with them. That is to say, it is as if we were experiencing for the first time something that we have actually already experienced.

The opposite happens than in déjà vu , another even more frequent paramnesia where we have a feeling of familiarity going through a new experience.

In this article we talk about the differences between jamais vu and déjà vu and introduce another phenomenon similar to jamais vu , which we should not confuse: cryptomnesia.

What is jamais vu?

The jamais vu is a perceptual phenomenon that is defined as ‘an anomaly of recognition’. Specifically, it is a “paramnesia”, that is, a distortion of memory. The German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin defined paramnesias as ‘pathological distortions of memory due to the inclusion of false details or due to an incorrect temporal reference’.

Paramnesias can occur both in healthy people (they need not be worrisome) and in people with a mental disorder. In the case of jamais vu , the person knows and remembers a situation, but does not experience any sense of familiarity.

It is much less frequent in the general population than déjà vu , the latter being the experience of believing that we have already seen or felt something that we really know is the first time we see or feel.

The loss of the meaning of words

A phenomenon related to jamais vu is the “loss of the meaning of words”, in which the word becomes a meaningless articulation of sounds when we repeat it, focusing our attention on it.

Thus, to experience this phenomenon, it is enough to repeat a word many times, until it loses its meaning for us.

What is déjà vu and how is it different from jamais vu?

We have mentioned the phenomenon of déjà vu as a distinct phenomenon from jamais vu . In the case of déjà vu , we speak of the belief, together with the sensation, of living something that we have already lived, when in reality it is not.

The déjà vu  may occur in normal population and clinical (and appears much more frequently than in the normal population vu jamais ). When it appears in the normal population (without previous psychological pathologies), it does so especially among the youngest and under conditions of fatigue. Another characteristic fact is that it usually lasts a few seconds.

In the clinical population (with some psychological disorder), déjà vu appears mainly in psychiatric patients, through a much more prolonged and continuous sensation. It is very common in disorders such as depersonalization, in epilepsies and in people who have suffered some type of injury to the temporal lobe.

Differences between déjà vu and jamais vu

In déjà vu , we feel great familiarity with a phenomenon that is actually new to us. It happens especially in certain places, with certain people … when we have the feeling that “we have already experienced that”.

On the other hand, in jamais vu , exactly the opposite occurs; something that we have actually experienced, we feel like new. That is, we do not experience any sense of familiarity with something that has already been really experienced.

Another related phenomenon: cryptoamensia

Cryptoamnesia is, like jamais vu , another recognition anomaly. It is defined as the experience in which a memory is not experienced as such (as a memory), but is believed to be an original production, lived for the first time.

In this case, there is a failure in recognition and the feeling of familiarity is absent. It always appears with semantic material, when this recognition has not been associated with personalized keys or from episodic memory.

Differences between jamais vu and cryptoamnesia

The difference between jamais vu and crypto amnesia consists of the following: while in crypto amnesia the failure occurs in the recognition of ideas already known (and, therefore, remembered), in jamais vu percepts are not recognized regularly experienced.

What happens in cryptoamnesia is that memories of self-generated thoughts are confused with memories of real events.

An example of this phenomenon would be a researcher who believes that he has had an idea of ​​his own when, in fact, that idea had been heard from someone else. Thus, what is an idea received from the outside, is confused with an original idea (generated by oneself).

In jamais vu , there is a lack of recognition of a percept, while in cryptoamnesia, there is confusion about the origin of an idea (of semantic content).

Related clinical picture: Capgras syndrome

Capgras syndrome, also called the Sosias illusion, is a clinical picture that is related to the phenomena described. In this case, the patient has the delusional belief that someone in his environment is a “double” or an impostor of who he claims to be.

There is a break between the familiarity of that person (which we do know) and his memory; We firmly believe that this person is an impostor, that he is not who he really claims to be.

Final thoughts

As we have vitos, jamais vu and déjà vu are different phenomena, almost opposite, that we can all experience at some point without this being the symptom of an abnormal functioning of our brain (pathology).

Thus, while in one we can identify an absence of familiarity in known events ( jamais vu ), in the other there is an excess of familiarity in “new” situations.

However, as a curious fact, there are psychological currents that propose that, in déjà vu , that feeling of familiarity occurs in situations that we have actually experienced. In this case, unconscious mechanisms of our psyche would operate that would allow us to understand the reason for its appearance.