Repressed memory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Repressed memories are memories that have been unconsciously blocked due to the memory being associated with a high level of stress or trauma. The theory postulates that even though the individual cannot recall the memory, it may still be affecting them subconsciously, and that these memories can emerge later into the consciousness. Ideas on repressed memory hiding trauma from awareness were an important part of Sigmund Freud's early work on psychoanalysis. He later took a different view.

The existence of repressed memories is an extremely controversial topic in psychology; although some studies have concluded that it can occur in a varying but generally small percentage of victims of trauma, many other studies dispute its existence entirely. Some psychologists support the theory of repressed memories and claim that repressed memories can be recovered through therapy, but most psychologists argue that this is in fact rather a process through which false memories are created by blending actual memories and outside influences. One study concluded that repressed memories were a cultural symptom for want of written proof of their existence before the nineteenth century, but its results were disputed by some psychologists, and a work discussing a repressed memory from 1786 was eventually acknowledged, though the others stand by their hypothesis.

According to the American Psychological Association, it is not possible to distinguish repressed memories from false ones without corroborating evidence. The term repressed memory is sometimes compared to the term dissociative amnesia, which is defined in the DSM-V as an "inability to recall autobiographical information. This amnesia may be localized (i.e., an event or period of time), selective (i.e., a specific aspect of an event), or generalized (i.e., identity and life history)." 

According to the Mayo Clinic, amnesia refers to any instance in which memories stored in the long-term memory are completely or partially forgotten, usually due to brain injury. According to proponents of the existence of repressed memories, such memories can be recovered years or decades after the event, most often spontaneously, triggered by a particular smell, taste, or other identifier related to the lost memory, or via suggestion during psychotherapy.

History

It was initially claimed that there was no documented writing about repressed memories or dissociative amnesia (as it is sometimes referred to), before the 1800s. This finding, by Harrison G. Pope, was based on a competition in which entrants could win $1000 if they could identify "a pre-1800 literary example of traumatic memory that has been repressed by an otherwise healthy individual, and then recovered." Pope claimed that no entrant had satisfied the criteria. Ross Cheit, a political scientist at Brown University, cited Nina, a 1786 opera by the French composer Nicolas Dalayrac.

The concept of repressed memory originated with Sigmund Freud in his 1896 essay Zur Ätiologie der Hysterie ("On the etiology of hysteria"). One of the studies published in his essay involved a young woman by the name of Anna O. Among her many ailments, she suffered from stiff paralysis on the right side of her body. Freud stated her symptoms to be attached to psychological traumas. The painful memories had separated from her consciousness and brought harm to her body. Freud used hypnosis to treat Anna O. She is reported to have gained slight mobility on her right side. Freud's repressed memory theory joined his philosophy of psychoanalysis. Repressed memory has remained a heavily debated topic inside of Freud's psychoanalysis philosophy.

Research

Some research indicates that memories of child sexual abuse and other traumatic incidents may be forgotten. Evidence of the spontaneous recovery of traumatic memories has been shown, and recovered memories of traumatic childhood abuse have been corroborated. Forgetting trauma, however, does not necessarily imply that the trauma was repressed. It is also possible that trauma may be forgotten through normal cognitive processes. This theory is supported by evidence that forgetting trauma most often occurs when the trauma did not cause a strong emotional reaction in the moment it was experienced.

Van der Kolk and Fisler's research shows that traumatic memories are retrieved, at least at first, in the form of mental imprints that are dissociated. These imprints are of the affective and sensory elements of the traumatic experience. Clients have reported the slow emergence of a personal narrative that can be considered explicit (conscious) memory. The level of emotional significance of a memory correlates directly with the memory's veracity. Studies of subjective reports of memory show that memories of highly significant events are unusually accurate and stable over time. The imprints of traumatic experiences appear to be qualitatively different from those of nontraumatic events. Traumatic memories may be coded differently from ordinary event memories, possibly because of alterations in attentional focusing or the fact that extreme emotional arousal interferes with the memory functions of the hippocampus.

Another possibility is that traumatic events are pushed out of consciousness until a later events elicits or triggers a psychological response. A high percentage of female psychiatric in-patients, and outpatients have reported experiencing histories of childhood sexual abuse. Other clinical studies have concluded that patients who experienced incestuous abuse reported higher suicide attempts and negative identity formation as well as more disturbances in interpersonal relationships.

There has also been significant questioning of the reality of repressed memories. There is considerable evidence that rather than being pushed out of consciousness, the difficulty with traumatic memories for most people are their intrusiveness and inability to forget. One case that is held up as definitive proof of the reality of repressed memories, recorded by David Corwin has been criticized by Elizabeth Loftus and Melvin Guyer for ignoring the context of the original complaint and falsely presenting the sexual abuse as unequivocal and true when in reality there was no definitive proof.

Retrospective studies (studying the extent to which participants can recall past events) depend critically on the ability of informants to recall accurate memories. The issue of reliability in participants’ introspective abilities has been questioned by modern psychologists. In other words, a participant accurately recalling and remembering their own past memories is highly criticized, because memories are undoubtedly influenced by external, environmental factors.

Psychologists Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham are authors of the seminal work on the fallacy of repressed memory, The Myth of Repressed Memory (St. Martin's Press, 1994).

Cause

It is hypothesised that repression may be one method used by individuals to cope with traumatic memories, by pushing them out of awareness (perhaps as an adaptation via psychogenic amnesia) to allow a child to maintain attachment to a person on whom they are dependent for survival. Researchers have proposed that repression can operate on a social level as well.

Other theoretical causes of forgotten memories have stemmed from the idea of Retrieval-Influenced Forgetting, which states that “false” memories will be more accurately recalled when rehearsed more, than when actual memories get rehearsed. In this scenario, the action of rehearsing a falsified memory can actually take precedence over the actual memory that a person experiences. Anderson et al. discovered that rehearsal of novel information exhibits inhibitive processes on one’s ability to remember or recall the prior (real) memory. This conclusion indicates that past memories can be easily forgotten, simply by attending to “real”, novel memories that are brought into awareness.

Authenticity

Memories can be accurate, but they are not always accurate. For example, eyewitness testimony even of relatively recent dramatic events is notoriously unreliable. Memories of events are a mix of fact overlaid with emotions, mingled with interpretation and "filled in" with imaginings. Skepticism regarding the validity of a memory as factual detail is warranted. For example, one study where victims of documented child abuse were reinterviewed many years later as adults, 38% of the women denied any memory of the abuse.

Arguments against the existence of "traumatic amnesia" note that various manipulations can be used to implant false memories (sometimes called "pseudomemories"). These can be quite compelling for those who develop them, and can include details that make them seem credible to others. A classic experiment in memory research, conducted by Elizabeth Loftus, became widely known as "Lost in the Mall"; in this, subjects were given a booklet containing three accounts of real childhood events written by family members and a fourth account of a wholly fictitious event of being lost in a shopping mall. A quarter of the subjects reported remembering the fictitious event, and elaborated on it with extensive circumstantial detail. This experiment inspired many others, and in one of these, Porter et al. could convince about half of his subjects that they had survived a vicious animal attack in childhood.

Such experimental studies have been criticized in particular about whether the findings are really relevant to trauma memories and psychotherapeutic situations. Nevertheless, these studies prompted public and professional concern about recovered memory therapy for past sexual abuse. When memories are "recovered" after long periods of amnesia, particularly when extraordinary means were used to secure the recovery of memory, it is now widely (but not universally) accepted that the memories are quite likely to be false, i.e. of incidents that had not occurred. It is thus recognised by professional organizations that a risk of implanting false memories is associated with some similar types of therapy. The American Psychiatric Association advises: "...most leaders in the field agree that although it is a rare occurrence, a memory of early childhood abuse that has been forgotten can be remembered later. However, these leaders also agree that it is possible to construct convincing pseudomemories for events that never occurred.

Nevertheless, many therapists believe in the authenticity of the recovered memories that they hear from their clients. In a non-random study by Loftus and Herzog (1991) with 16 clinicians, 13 (81%) said that they invariably believed their clients. The most common basis for this belief was the patient’s symptomology (low self-esteem, sexual dysfunction, self-destructive behaviour) or body memories (voice frozen etc.).

The mechanism(s) by which both of these phenomena happen are not well understood and, at this point it is impossible, without other corroborative evidence, to distinguish a true memory from a false one." Sheflin and Brown state that a total of 25 studies on amnesia for child sexual abuse exist and that they demonstrate amnesia in their study subpopulations. However, an editorial in the British Medical Journal states on the Sheflin and Brown study that "on critical examination, the scientific evidence for repression crumbles."

Obviously, not all therapists agree that false memories are a major risk of psychotherapy and they argue that this idea overstates the data and is untested. Several studies have reported high percentages of the corroboration of recovered memories, and some authors have claimed that the false memory movement has tended to conceal or omit evidence of (the) corroboration" of recovered memories.

Both true and false "memories" can be recovered using memory work techniques, but there is no evidence that reliable discriminations can be made between them. Some believe that memories "recovered" under hypnosis are particularly likely to be false. According to The Council on Scientific Affairs for the American Medical Association, recollections obtained during hypnosis can involve confabulations and pseudomemories and appear to be less reliable than nonhypnotic recall. Brown et al. estimate that 3 to 5% of laboratory subjects are vulnerable to post-event misinformation suggestions. They state that 5–8% of the general population is the range of high-hypnotizability. Twenty-five percent of those in this range are vulnerable to suggestion of pseudomemories for peripheral details, which can rise to 80% with a combination of other social influence factors. They conclude that the rates of memory errors run 0–5% in adult studies, 3–5% in children's studies and that the rates of false allegations of child abuse allegations run 4–8% in the general population.

Neurological basis of memory

The neuroscientist Donald Hebb (1904–1985) was the first to distinguish between short-term memory and long-term memory. According to current theories in neuroscience, things that we "notice" are stored in short-term memory for up to a few minutes; this memory depends on "reverberating" electrical activity in neuronal circuits, and is very easily destroyed by interruption or interference. Memories stored for longer than this are stored in "long-term memory". Whether information is stored in long-term memory depends on its "importance"; for any animal, memories of traumatic events are potentially important for the adaptive value that they have for future avoidance behavior, and hormones that are released during stress have a role in determining what memories are preserved. In humans, traumatic stress is associated with acute secretion of epinephrine and norepinephrine (adrenaline and noradrenaline) from the adrenal medulla and cortisol from the adrenal cortex. Increases in these facilitate memory, but chronic stress associated with prolonged hypersecretion of cortisol may have the opposite effect. The limbic system is involved in memory storage and retrieval as well as giving emotional significance to sensory inputs. Within the limbic system, the hippocampus is important for explicit memory, and for memory consolidation; it is also sensitive to stress hormones, and has a role in recording the emotions of a stressful event. The amygdala may be particularly important in assigning emotional values to sensory inputs.

Although memory distortion occurs in everyday life, the brain mechanisms involved are not easy to study in the laboratory, but neuroimaging techniques have recently been applied to this subject. In particular, there have recently been studies of false recognition, where individuals incorrectly claim to have encountered a novel object or event, and the results suggest that the hippocampus and several cortical regions may contribute to such false recognition, while the prefrontal cortex may be involved in retrieval monitoring that can limit the rate of false recognition.

Amnesia

Amnesia is partial or complete loss of memory that goes beyond mere forgetting. Often it is temporary and involves only part of a person's experience. Amnesia is often caused by an injury to the brain, for instance after a blow to the head, and sometimes by psychological trauma. Anterograde amnesia is a failure to remember new experiences that occur after damage to the brain; retrograde amnesia is the loss of memories of events that occurred before a trauma or injury. For a memory to become permanent (consolidated), there must be a persistent change in the strength of connections between particular neurons in the brain. Anterograde amnesia can occur because this consolidation process is disrupted; retrograde amnesia can result either from damage to the site of memory storage or from a disruption in the mechanisms by which memories can be retrieved from their stores. Many specific types of amnesia are recognized, including:

• Childhood amnesia is the normal inability to recall memories from the first three years of life. Sigmund Freud observed that not only do humans not remember anything from birth to three years, but they also have “spotty” recollection of anything occurring from three to seven years of age. There are various theories as to why this occurs: some believe that language development is important for efficient storage of long-term memories; others believe that early memories do not persist because the brain is still developing.
• A fugue state, formally dissociative fugue, is a rare condition precipitated by a stressful episode. It is characterized by episode(s) of traveling away from home and creating a new identity.

The form of amnesia that is linked with recovered memories is dissociative amnesia (formerly known as psychogenic amnesia). This results from a psychological cause, not by direct damage to the brain, and is a loss of memory of significant personal information, usually about traumatic or extremely stressful events. Usually this is seen as a gap or gaps in recall for aspects of someone's life history, but with severe acute trauma, such as during wartime, there can be a sudden acute onset of symptoms.

Effects of trauma on memory

"Betrayal Trauma Theory" proposes that in cases of childhood abuse, dissociative amnesia is an adaptive response, and that “victims may need to remain unaware of the trauma not to reduce suffering but rather to promote survival.” When stress interferes with memory, it is possible that some of the memory is kept by a system that records emotional experience, but there is no symbolic placement of it in time or space. Traumatic memories are retrieved, at least at first, in the form of dissociated mental imprints of the affective and sensory elements of the traumatic experience. Clients have reported the slow emergence of a personal narrative that can be considered explicit (conscious) memory. 

Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk divided the effects of traumas on memory functions into four sets:

• Traumatic amnesia; this involves the loss of memories of traumatic experiences. The younger the subject and the longer the traumatic event is, the greater the chance of significant amnesia. He stated that subsequent retrieval of memories after traumatic amnesia is well documented in the literature, with documented examples following natural disasters and accidents, in combat soldiers, in victims of kidnapping, torture and concentration camp experiences, in victims of physical and sexual abuse, and in people who have committed murder.
• Global memory impairment; this makes it difficult for subjects to construct an accurate account of their present and past history. "The combination of lack of autobiographical memory, continued dissociation and of meaning schemes that include victimization, helplessness and betrayal, is likely to make these individuals vulnerable to suggestion and to the construction of explanations for their trauma-related affects that may bear little relationship to the actual realities of their lives"
• Dissociative processes; this refers to memories being stored as fragments and not as unitary wholes.
• Traumatic memories’ sensorimotor organization. Not being able to integrate traumatic memories seems to be linked to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

According to van der Kolk, memories of highly significant events are usually accurate and stable over time; aspects of traumatic experiences appear to get stuck in the mind, unaltered by time passing or experiences that may follow. The imprints of traumatic experiences appear to be different from those of nontraumatic events, perhaps because of alterations in attentional focusing or the fact that extreme emotional arousal interferes with memory. van der Kolk and Fisler's hypothesis is that under extreme stress, the memory categorization system based in the hippocampus fails, with these memories kept as emotional and sensory states. When these traces are remembered and put into a personal narrative, they are subject to being condensed, contaminated and embellished upon. 

When there is inadequate recovery time between stressful situations, alterations may occur to the stress response system, some of which may be irreversible, and cause pathological responses, which may include memory loss, learning deficits and other maladaptive symptoms. In animal studies, high levels of cortisol can cause hippocampal damage, which may cause short-term memory deficits; in humans, MRI studies have shown reduced hippocampal volumes in combat veterans with PTSD, adults with posttraumatic symptoms and survivors of repeated childhood sexual or physical abuse. Trauma may also interfere with implicit memory, where periods of avoidance may be interrupted by intrusive emotional occurrences with no story to guide them. A difficult issue is whether those presumably abused accurately recall their experiences.

Criticism

The existence of repressed memory recovery has not been accepted by mainstream psychology, nor unequivocally proven to exist, and some experts in the field of human memory feel that no credible scientific support exists for the notions of repressed/recovered memories. A survey revealed that whilst memory and cognition experts tend to be skeptical of repressed memory, clinicians are much more apt to believe that traumatic memory is often repressed. One research report states that a distinction should be made between spontaneously recovered memories and memories recovered during suggestions in therapy. A criticism from Loftus is that recovered memories can be tainted by the process of recovery, the suggestions used in that process, or even cultural and environmental influences.

The Working Group on Investigation of Memories of Child Abuse of the American Psychological Association presented findings mirroring those of the other professional organizations. The Working Group made five key conclusions:

1. Controversies regarding adult recollections should not be allowed to obscure the fact that child sexual abuse is a complex and pervasive problem in America that has historically gone unacknowledged;
2. Most people who were sexually abused as children remember all or part of what happened to them;
3. It is possible for memories of abuse that have been forgotten for a long time to be remembered;
4. It is also possible to construct convincing pseudo-memories for events that never occurred; and
5. There are gaps in our knowledge about the processes that lead to accurate and inaccurate recollections of childhood abuse.

Many critics believe that memories may be distorted and false. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus questions the concept of repressed memories and the possibility of them being accurate. Loftus focuses on techniques that therapists use in order to help the patients recover their memory. Such techniques include age regression, guided visualization, trance writing, dream work, body work, and hypnosis. Loftus' research indicates that repressed memory faces problems, such as memory alteration. In one case a teenage boy was able to “conjure a memory of an event that never occurred.” According to Loftus, if a stable person could be influenced to remember an event that never occurred, an emotionally stressed person would be even more susceptible. Writer Mark Pendergrast has denounced the theory of repressed memories and its applications in sex abuse cases, including in particular the Jerry Sandusky case.

Medico-legal issues

Serious issues arise when recovered but false memories result in public allegations; false complaints carry serious consequences for the accused. Many of those who make false claims sincerely believe the truth of what they report. A special type of false allegation, the false memory syndrome, arises typically within therapy, when people report the "recovery" of childhood memories of previously unknown abuse. The influence of practitioners' beliefs and practices in the eliciting of false "memories" and of false complaints has come under particular criticism.

It is generally accepted that people sometimes are unable to recall traumatic experiences. An old version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), published by the American Psychiatric Association, states that "Dissociative amnesia is characterized by an inability to recall important personal information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature, that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness." The term "recovered memory", however, is not listed in DSM-IV or used by any mainstream formal psychotherapy modality.

Legal state

Some criminal cases have been based on a witness's testimony of recovered repressed memories, often of alleged childhood sexual abuse. In some jurisdictions, the statute of limitations for child abuse cases has been extended to accommodate the phenomena of repressed memories as well as other factors. The repressed memory concept came into wider public awareness in the 1980s and 1990s followed by a reduction of public attention after a series of scandals, lawsuits, and license revocations.

A U.S. District Court accepted repressed memories as admissible evidence in a specific case. Dalenberg argues that the evidence shows that recovered memory cases should be allowed to be prosecuted in court.

The apparent willingness of courts to credit the recovered memories of complainants but not the absence of memories by defendants has been commented on: "It seems apparent that the courts need better guidelines around the issue of dissociative amnesia in both populations."

In 1995, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, in Franklin v. Duncan and Franklin v. Fox, Murray et al. (312 F3d. 423, see also 884 FSupp 1435, N.D. Calif.), that repressed memory is not admissible as evidence in a legal action because of its unreliability, inconsistency, unscientific nature, tendency to be therapeutically induced evidence, and subject to influence by hearsay and suggestibility. The court overturned the conviction of a man accused of murdering a nine-year-old girl purely based upon the evidence of a 21-year-old repressed memory by a lone witness, who also held a complex personal grudge against the defendant.

In a 1996 ruling, a U.S. District Court allowed repressed memories entered into evidence in court cases. Jennifer Freyd writes that Ross Cheit's case of suddenly remembered sexual abuse is one of the most well-documented cases available for the public to see. Cheit prevailed in two lawsuits, located five additional victims and tape-recorded a confession.

On December 16, 2005, the Irish Court of Criminal Appeal issued a certificate confirming a Miscarriage of Justice to a former nun, Nora Wall whose 1999 conviction for child rape was partly based on repressed-memory evidence. The judgement stated that:

There was no scientific evidence of any sort adduced to explain the phenomenon of "flashbacks" and/or "retrieved memory", nor was the applicant in any position to meet such a case in the absence of prior notification thereof.

On August 16, 2010 the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a case reversed the conviction that relied on claimed victim memories of childhood abuse stating that "The record here suggests a "reasonable likelihood" that Jesse Friedman was wrongfully convicted. The "new and material evidence” in this case is the post-conviction consensus within the social science community that suggestive memory recovery tactics can create false memories" (pg 27 FRIEDMAN v. REHAL Docket No. 08-0297). The ruling goes on to order all previous convictions and plea bargains relying in repressed memories using common memory recovered techniques be reviewed.

Clinical relevance

Recovered memory therapy

Recovered memory therapy is a range of psychotherapy methods based on recalling memories of abuse that had previously been forgotten by the patient. The term "recovered memory therapy" is not listed in DSM-IV or used by mainstream formal psychotherapy modality. Opponents of the therapy advance the explanation that therapy can create false memories through suggestion techniques; this has not been corroborated, though some research has shown supportive evidence. Nevertheless, the evidence is questioned by some researchers. It is possible for patients who retract their claims—after deciding their recovered memories are false—to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder due to the trauma of illusory memories.

Déjà vu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Déjà vu is a French term describing the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before. The phrase translates literally as "already seen". Although some interpret déjà vu in a paranormal context, mainstream scientific approaches reject the explanation of déjà vu as "precognition" or "prophecy". Rather, they explain it as an anomaly of memory, since despite the strong sense of recollection, the time, place, and practical context of the "previous" experience are uncertain or believed to be impossible. Two types of déjà vu are recognized: the pathological déjà vu usually associated with epilepsy or that which, when unusually prolonged or frequent, or associated with other symptoms such as hallucinations, may be an indicator of neurological or psychiatric illness, and the non-pathological type characteristic of healthy people, about two-thirds of whom have had déjà vu experiences. People who travel more or watch more movies are more likely to experience déjà vu than others. Furthermore, people also tend to experience déjà vu more in fragile conditions or under high pressure, and research shows that the experience of déjà vu also decreases with age.

Medical disorders

Déjà vu is most strongly associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. This experience is a neurological anomaly related to epileptic electrical discharge in the brain, creating a strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past. 

Early researchers tried to establish a link between déjà vu and mental disorders such as anxiety, dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia but failed to find correlations of any diagnostic value. No special association has been found between déjà vu and schizophrenia. A 2008 study found that déjà vu experiences are unlikely to be pathological dissociative experiences.

Some research has looked into genetics when considering déjà vu. Although there is not currently a gene associated with déjà vu, the LGII gene on chromosome 10 is being studied for a possible link. Certain forms of the gene are associated with a mild form of epilepsy and, though by no means a certainty, déjà vu, along with jamais vu, occurs often enough during seizures (such as simple partial seizures) that researchers have reason to suspect a link.

Pharmacology

Certain drugs increase the chances of déjà vu occurring in the user, resulting in a strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past. Some pharmaceutical drugs, when taken together, have also been implicated in the cause of déjà vu. Taiminen and Jääskeläinen (2001) reported the case of an otherwise healthy male who started experiencing intense and recurrent sensations of déjà vu upon taking the drugs amantadine and phenylpropanolamine together to relieve flu symptoms. He found the experience so interesting that he completed the full course of his treatment and reported it to the psychologists to write up as a case study. Because of the dopaminergic action of the drugs and previous findings from electrode stimulation of the brain (e.g. Bancaud, Brunet-Bourgin, Chauvel, & Halgren, 1994), Taiminen and Jääskeläinen speculate that déjà vu occurs as a result of hyperdopaminergic action in the mesial temporal areas of the brain.

Explanations

Split perception explanation

Déjà vu may happen if a person experienced the current sensory twice successively. The first input experience is brief, degraded, occluded, or distracted. Immediately followed by that, the second perception might be familiar because the person naturally related it to the first input. One possibility behind this mechanism is that the first input experience involves shallow processing, which means that only some superficial physical attributes are extracted from the stimulus.

Memory-based explanation

Implicit memory

Research has associated déjà vu experiences with good memory functions. Recognition memory enables people to realize the event or activity that they are experiencing has happened before. When people experiencing déjà vu, they would have the recognition memory triggered by certain situations which they have never encountered. 

The similarity between a déjà-vu-eliciting stimulus and an existing, or non-existing but different, memory trace may lead to the sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past. Thus, encountering something that evokes the implicit associations of an experience or sensation that cannot be remembered may lead to déjà vu. In an effort to reproduce the sensation experimentally, Banister and Zangwill (1941) used hypnosis to give participants posthypnotic amnesia for material they had already seen. When this was later re-encountered, the restricted activation caused thereafter by the posthypnotic amnesia resulted in 3 of the 10 participants reporting what the authors termed "paramnesias". 

Two approaches are used by researchers to study feelings of previous experience, with the process of recollection and familiarity. Recollection-based recognition refers to the realization of the current situation has occurred before. Familiarity-based recognition refers to the feeling of familiar with the current situation without identifying anything.

In 2010, O’Connor, Moulin, and Conway developed another laboratory analogue of déjà vu based on two contrast groups of carefully selected participants, a group under posthypnotic amnesia condition (PHA) and a group under posthypnotic familiarity condition (PHT). The idea of PHA group was based on the work done by Banister and Zangwill (1941), and the PHT group was built on the research results of O’Connor, Moulin, and Conway (2007). They applied the same puzzle game for both groups, “Railroad Rush Hour”, which is a game aims for sliding the red car through the exit by rearranging and shifting other blocking trucks and cars on the road. After completing the puzzle, each participant in PHA group received a posthypnotic amnesia suggestion to forget the game in the hypnosis. On the other hand, each participant in the PHT group were not given the puzzle but received a posthypnotic familiarity suggestion that they would feel familiar with this game during the hypnosis. After the hypnosis, all participants were asked to play the puzzle (the second time for PHA group) and reported the feelings of playing. 

In the PHA condition, if a participant reported no memory of completing the puzzle game during hypnosis, researchers scored the participant as passing the suggestion. In the PHF condition, if participants reported that the puzzle game felt familiar, researchers would score the participant as passing the suggestion. It turns out that, both in the PHA and PHF conditions, 5 participants passed the suggestion and 1 did not, which is 83.33% of the total sample. More participants in PHF group felt strong sense of familiarity, for instance, commenting like “I think I have done this several years ago”. Furthermore, more participants in PHF group experienced a strong déjà vu, for example, describing like “I think I have done the exact puzzle before.” Only 3 out of 6 participants in PHA group felt a sense of déjà vu, and none of them experienced a strong sense of déjà vu. These figures are consistent with Banister and Zangwill’s findings. Some participants in PHA group related the familiarity when completing the puzzle with an exact event happened before, which is more likely to be a phenomenon of source amnesia. Other participants started to realize that they may have completed the puzzle game during hypnosis, which is more akin to the phenomenon of breaching. In contrast, participants in PHF group reported that they felt confused about the strong familiarity of this puzzle but feeling of play it just sliding across their mind. Overall, the experiences of participants in PHF group is more likely to be the déjà vu in life, while the experiences of participants in PHA group is unlike to be the real déjà vu. 

A 2012 study in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, that used virtual reality technology to study reported déjà vu experiences, supported this idea. This virtual reality investigation suggested that similarity between a new scene's spatial layout and the layout of a previously experienced scene in memory (but which fails to be recalled) may contribute to the déjà vu experience. When the previously experienced scene fails to come to mind in response to viewing the new scene, that previously experienced scene in memory can still exert an effect—that effect may be a feeling of familiarity with the new scene that is subjectively experienced as a feeling that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past, or of having been there before despite knowing otherwise. 

Cryptomnesia: Reconstruction of a memory

Another possible explanation for the phenomenon of déjà vu is the occurrence of "cryptomnesia", which is where information learned is forgotten but nevertheless stored in the brain, and similar occurrences invoke the contained knowledge, leading to a feeling of familiarity because the event or experience being experienced has already been experienced in the past, known as "déjà vu". Some experts suggest that memory is a process of reconstruction, rather than a recall of fixed, established events. This reconstruction comes from stored components, involving elaborations, distortions, and omissions. Each successive recall of an event is merely a recall of the last reconstruction. The proposed sense of recognition (déjà vu) involves achieving a good "match" between the present experience and our stored data. This reconstruction, however, may now differ so much from the original event that we "know" we have never experienced it before, even though it seems similar.

Dual neurological processing

In 1964, Robert Efron of Boston's Veterans Hospital proposed that déjà vu is caused by dual neurological processing caused by delayed signals. Efron found that the brain's sorting of incoming signals is done in the temporal lobe of the brain's left hemisphere. However, signals enter the temporal lobe twice before processing, once from each hemisphere of the brain, normally with a slight delay of milliseconds between them. Efron proposed that if the two signals were occasionally not synchronized properly, then they would be processed as two separate experiences, with the second seeming to be a re-living of the first.

Dream-based explanation

Dream can also be used to explain the experience of déjà vu, and they are related in three different aspects. Firstly, some déjà vu experiences duplicate the situation in dreams instead of waking conditions, according to the survey done by Brown (2004). 20% of the respondents reported their déjà vu experiences were from dreams and 40% of the respondents reported that from both reality and dreams. Secondly, people may experience déjà vu because some elements in their remembered dreams were shown. A research done by Zuger (1966) supported this idea by investigating the relationship between remembered dreams and déjà vu experiences, and suggested that there is a strong correlation. Thirdly, people may experience déjà vu during a dream state, which links déjà vu with dream frequency. 

Related terms

Jamais vu

Jamais vu (from French, meaning "never seen") is a term in psychology which is used to describe any familiar situation which is not recognized by the observer.

Often described as the opposite of déjà vu, jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer's impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before. Jamais vu is more commonly explained as when a person momentarily does not recognize a word, person, or place that they already know. Jamais vu is sometimes associated with certain types of aphasia, amnesia, and epilepsy. 

Theoretically, a jamais vu feeling in a sufferer of a delirious disorder or intoxication could result in a delirious explanation of it, such as in the Capgras delusion, in which the patient takes a known person for a false double or impostor. If the impostor is himself, the clinical setting would be the same as the one described as depersonalisation, hence jamais vus of oneself or of the very "reality of reality", are termed depersonalisation (or surreality) feelings.

The feeling has been evoked through semantic satiation. Chris Moulin of the University of Leeds asked 95 volunteers to write the word "door" 30 times in 60 seconds. 68 percent of the subjects reported symptoms of jamais vu, with some beginning to doubt that "door" was a real word.

The experience has also been named "vuja de" and "véjà du".

Déjà vécu

Déjà vécu was traditionally used to describe a feeling of “already living through”; however, it has been considered as a pathological form of déjà vu recently. Déjà vécu has behavioural consequences, unlike from déjà vu. Patients of déjà vécu would withdraw from their current events or activities since they believed that they have participated them before because of the familiarity. Patients justify their feelings of familiarity with beliefs bordering on delusion. 

Presque vu

Presque vu (French pronunciation: ​[pʁɛsk vy], from French, meaning "almost seen") is the intense feeling of being on the very brink of a powerful epiphany, insight, or revelation, without actually achieving the revelation. The feeling is often therefore associated with a frustrating, tantalizing sense of incompleteness or near-completeness.

Déjà rêvé

Déjà rêvé (from French, meaning "already dreamed") is the feeling of having already dreamed something that you are now experiencing.

Déjà entendu

Déjà entendu (literally "already heard") is the experience of feeling sure about having already heard something, even though the exact details are uncertain or were perhaps imagined.

Déjà vous

Déjà vous is a pun on the English pronunciation of déjà vu. The French pronunciation of the vowel U in vu, [y]audio (help·info), does not exist in English. Therefore déjà vu is pronounced with a /uː/ in English. When pronounced this way, /ˌdeɪʒɑː ˈvuː/ (listen), it means "already you" in French, rather than "already seen" and is written "déjà vous".

Stranger in a Strange Land

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hardcover, showing Rodin's sculpture, Fallen Caryatid Carrying her Stone
Author	Robert A. Heinlein
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	G. P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date	June 1, 1961
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	408 (208,018 words)
ISBN	978-0-441-79034-0

Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians. The novel explores his interaction with—and eventual transformation of—Terran culture.

The title "Stranger in a Strange Land" is an allusion to the phrase in Exodus 2:22. According to Heinlein, the novel's working title was The Heretic.

In 1991, three years after Heinlein's death, his widow, Virginia Heinlein, arranged to have the original unedited manuscript published. Critics disagree about which version is superior, though Heinlein preferred the original manuscript and described the heavily edited version as "telegraphese".

In 2012, the US Library of Congress named it one of 88 "Books that Shaped America".

Plot

The story focuses on a human raised on Mars and his adaptation to, and understanding of, humans and their culture. It is set in a post-Third World War United States, where organized religions are politically powerful. There is a World Federation of Free Nations, including the demilitarized U.S., with a world government supported by Special Service troops. 

A manned expedition is mounted to visit the planet Mars, but all contact is lost after landing. A second expedition 25 years later finds a single survivor, Valentine Michael Smith. Smith was born on the spacecraft and was raised entirely by the Martians. He is ordered by the Martians to accompany the returning expedition.

Because Smith is unaccustomed to the conditions on Earth, he is confined at Bethesda Hospital, where having never seen a human female, he is attended by male staff only. Seeing this restriction as a challenge, Nurse Gillian Boardman eludes the guards and goes in to see Smith. By sharing a glass of water with him, she inadvertently becomes his first female "water brother", considered a profound relationship by the Martians. 

Gillian tells her lover, reporter Ben Caxton, about her experience with Smith. Ben explains that as heir to the entire exploration party, Smith is extremely wealthy, and following a legal precedent set during the colonisation of the Moon, he could be considered owner of Mars itself. His arrival on Earth has prompted a political power struggle that puts his life in danger. Ben persuades her to bug Smith's room and then publishes stories to bait the government into releasing him. Ben is seized by the government, and Gillian persuades Smith to leave the hospital with her. When government agents catch up with them, Smith makes the agents vanish, then is so shocked by Gillian's terrified reaction that he enters a semblance of catatonia. Gillian, remembering Ben's earlier suggestion, conveys Smith to Jubal Harshaw, a famous author who is also a physician and a lawyer. 

Smith continues to demonstrate psychic abilities and superhuman intelligence, coupled with a childlike naïveté. When Harshaw tries to explain religion to him, Smith understands the concept of God only as "one who groks", which includes every extant organism. This leads him to express the Martian concept of life as the phrase "Thou art God", although he knows this is a bad translation. Many other human concepts such as war, clothing, and jealousy are strange to him, while the idea of an afterlife is a fact he takes for granted because Martian society is directed by "Old Ones", the spirits of Martians who have "discorporated". It is also customary for loved ones and friends to eat the bodies of the dead, in a rite similar to Holy Communion. Eventually, Harshaw arranges freedom for Smith and recognition that human law, which would have granted ownership of Mars to Smith, has no applicability to a planet already inhabited by intelligent life.

Still inexhaustibly wealthy, and now free to travel, Smith becomes a celebrity and is feted by the Earth's elite. He investigates many religions, including the Fosterite Church of the New Revelation, a populist megachurch wherein sexuality, gambling, alcohol consumption, and similar activities are allowed, even encouraged, and only considered "sinning" when not under church auspices. The Church of the New Revelation is organized in a complexity of initiatory levels: an outer circle, open to the public; a middle circle of ordinary members who support the church financially; and an inner circle of the "eternally saved" — attractive, highly sexed men and women, who serve as clergy and recruit new members. The Church owns many politicians and takes violent action against those who oppose it. Smith also has a brief career as a magician in a carnival, where he and Gillian befriend the show's tattooed lady, an "eternally saved" Fosterite named Patricia Paiwonski.

Eventually, Smith starts a Martian-influenced "Church of All Worlds" combining elements of the Fosterite cult (especially the sexual aspects) with Western esotericism, whose members learn the Martian language and thus acquire psychokinetic abilities. The church is eventually besieged by Fosterites for practicing "blasphemy", and the church building is destroyed; but unknown to the public, Smith's followers teleport to safety. Smith is arrested by the police, but escapes and returns to his followers, later explaining to Jubal that his gigantic fortune has been bequeathed to the Church. With that wealth and their new abilities, Church members will be able to re-organize human societies and cultures. Eventually, those who cannot or will not learn Smith's methods will die out, leaving Homo superior. Incidentally, this may save Earth from eventual destruction by the Martians, who were responsible for the destruction of the fifth planet, eons ago. 

Smith is killed by a mob raised against him by the Fosterites. From the afterlife, he speaks briefly to grief-stricken Jubal, to dissuade him from suicide. Having consumed a small portion of Smith's remains in keeping with Martian custom, Jubal and some of the Church members return to Jubal's home to regroup and prepare for their new evangelical role founding congregations. Meanwhile, Smith re-appears in the afterlife to replace the Fosterites' eponymous founder, amid hints that Smith was an incarnation of the Archangel Michael.

Characters

Heinlein named his main character "Smith" because of a speech he made at a science fiction convention regarding the unpronounceable names assigned to extraterrestrials. After describing the importance of establishing a dramatic difference between humans and aliens, Heinlein concluded, "Besides, whoever heard of a Martian named Smith?" ("A Martian Named Smith" was both Heinlein's working title for the book and the name of the screenplay started by Harshaw at the end). The title Stranger In a Strange Land is taken from the King James Version of Exodus 2:22, "And she bore him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land".

In the preface to the uncut, original version of the book re-issued in 1991, Heinlein's widow, Virginia, wrote: "The given names of the chief characters have great importance to the plot. They were carefully selected: Jubal means 'the father of all,' Michael stands for 'Who is like God?'".

• Valentine Michael Smith — known as Michael Smith or "Mike"; the "Man from Mars", raised on Mars in the interval between the landing of his parents' ship, the Envoy, and arrival of the second expedition, the Champion; is about 20 years old when the Champion arrives and brings him to Earth.
• Gillian (Jill) Boardman — a nurse at Bethesda Hospital who sneaks Mike out of government custody; she plays a key role in introducing him to human culture and becomes one of his closest confidantes and a central figure in the Church of All Worlds, which Mike develops.
• Ben Caxton — an early love interest of Jill's, and an investigative journalist (Jill sees him as of the "lippmann" or, political, rather than the "winchell", or celebrity gossip inclination), who masterminds Mike's initial freedom from custody; he joins Mike's inner circle but remains somewhat skeptical, at first, of the social order it develops.
• Jubal Harshaw — a popular writer, lawyer, and doctor, now semi-retired to a house in the Pocono Mountains; as an influential but reclusive public figure, he provides pivotal support for Mike's independence and a safe haven for him; elderly but in good health, he serves as a father figure for the inner circle while keeping a suspicious distance from it.
• Anne, Miriam, Dorcas — Harshaw's three personal/professional secretaries, who live with him and take turns as his "front", responding to his instructions; Anne is certified as a Fair Witness, empowered to provide objective legal testimony about events she witnesses; all three become early acolytes of Michael's church.
• Duke, Larry – Handymen who work for Harshaw and live in his estate; they also become central members of the church.
• Dr. "Stinky" Mahmoud — a semanticist and the second human (after Mike) to gain a working knowledge of the Martian language, though he does not "grok" the language; becomes a member of the church while retaining his Muslim faith.
• Patty Paiwonski – a "tattooed lady" and snake handler at the circus Mike and Jill join for a time; she has ties to the Fosterite church, which she retains as a member of Mike's inner circle.
• Joseph Douglas — Secretary-General of the Federation of Free States, which has evolved indirectly from the United Nations into a true world government.
• Alice Douglas — (sometimes called "Agnes"), Joe Douglas' wife. As the First Lady, she manipulates her husband, making major economic, political, and staffing decisions. She frequently consults astrologer Becky Vesant for major decisions.
• Foster — the founder of the Church of the New Revelation (Fosterite); now existing as an archangel.
• Digby — Foster's successor as head of the Fosterite Church; he becomes an archangel under Foster after Mike "discorporates" him.

Reception

Heinlein's deliberately provocative book generated considerable controversy. The free love and commune living aspects of the Church of All Worlds led to the book's exclusion from school reading lists. After it was rumored to be associated with Charles Manson, it was removed from school libraries as well. 

Writing in The New York Times, Orville Prescott received the novel caustically, describing it as a "disastrous mishmash of science fiction, laborious humor, dreary social satire and cheap eroticism"; he characterized Stranger in a Strange Land as "puerile and ludicrous", saying "when a non-stop orgy is combined with a lot of preposterous chatter, it becomes unendurable, an affront to the patience and intelligence of readers". Galaxy reviewer Floyd C. Gale rated the novel 3.5 stars out of five, saying "the book's shortcomings lie not so much in its emancipation as in the fact that Heinlein has bitten off too large a chewing portion".

Despite such reviews, Stranger in a Strange Land won the 1962 Hugo Award for Best Novel and became the first science fiction novel to enter The New York Times Book Review's best-seller list. In 2012, it was included in a Library of Congress exhibition of "Books That Shaped America".

Development

Heinlein got the idea for the novel when he and his wife Virginia were brainstorming one evening in 1948. She suggested a new version of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894), but with a child raised by Martians instead of wolves. He decided to go further with the idea and worked on the story on and off for more than a decade. His editors at Putnam then required him to cut its 220,000-word length down to 160,000 words before publication. 

Originally titled The Heretic, the book was written in part as a deliberate attempt to challenge social mores. In the course of the story, Heinlein uses Smith's open-mindedness to reevaluate such institutions as religion, money, monogamy, and the fear of death. Heinlein completed writing it ten years after he had plotted it out in detail. He later wrote, "I had been in no hurry to finish it, as that story could not be published commercially until the public mores changed. I could see them changing and it turned out that I had timed it right."

The book was dedicated in part to science fiction author Philip José Farmer, who had explored sexual themes in works such as The Lovers (1952). It was also influenced by the satiric fantasies of James Branch Cabell.

Heinlein was surprised that some readers thought the book described how he believed society should be organized, explaining: "I was not giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers ... It is an invitation to think – not to believe."

Influence

The book significantly influenced modern culture in a variety of ways.

Church of All Worlds

A central element of the second half of the novel is the religious movement founded by Smith, the "Church of All Worlds", an initiatory mystery religion blending elements of paganism and revivalism, with psychic training and instruction in the Martian language. In 1968, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (then Tim Zell) founded the Church of All Worlds, a Neopagan religious organization modeled in many ways after the fictional organization in the novel. This spiritual path included several ideas from the book, including polyamory, non-mainstream family structures, social libertarianism, water-sharing rituals, an acceptance of all religious paths by a single tradition, and the use of several terms such as "grok", "Thou art God", and "Never Thirst". Though Heinlein was neither a member nor a promoter of the Church, it was formed including frequent correspondence between Zell and Heinlein, and Heinlein was a paid subscriber to the Church's magazine Green Egg. This Church still exists as a 501(c)(3) recognized religious organization incorporated in California, with membership worldwide, and it remains an active part of the neopagan community today.

Grok

The word "grok", coined in the novel, made its way into the English language. In Heinlein's invented Martian language, "grok" literally means "to drink" and figuratively means "to comprehend", "to love", and "to be one with". This word rapidly became common parlance among science fiction fans, hippies, and later computer programmers and hackers, and has since entered the Oxford English Dictionary.

Fair Witness

The profession of Fair Witness, invented for the novel, has been cited in such varied contexts as environmentalism, psychology, technology, digital signatures, and science, as well as books on leadership and Sufism. A Fair Witness is an individual trained to observe events and report exactly what is seen and heard, making no extrapolations or assumptions. When in the Fair Witness uniform of a white robe, they are presumed to be observing and opining in their professional capacity. Works that refer to the Fair Witness emphasize the profession's impartiality, integrity, objectivity, and reliability.

Waterbed

Stranger in a Strange Land contains an early description of the waterbed, an invention that made its real-world debut in 1968. Charles Hall, who brought a waterbed design to the United States Patent Office, was refused a patent on the grounds that Heinlein's descriptions in Stranger in a Strange Land and another novel, Double Star (1956), constituted prior art.

In popular culture

• Heinlein's novella Lost Legacy (1941) lends its theme, and possibly some characters, to Stranger in a Strange Land. In a relevant part of the story, Joan Freeman is described as feeling like "a stranger in a strange land".
• The Police released an Andy Summers-penned song titled "Friends", as the B-side to their hit "Don't Stand So Close to Me" (1980), that referenced the novel. Summers claimed that it "was about eating your friends, or 'grocking' them as [Stranger in a Strange Land] put it".
• Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire" (1989) mentions the novel.
• The Byrds' song "Triad"" (1967), a song about polyamory, uses the term "water brother" from the novel.

TV series

In November 2016, Syfy announced plans to develop a TV series based on the novel with Paramount Television and Universal Cable Productions co-producing the series.

Publication history

Two major versions of this book exist:

• The 1961 version which, at the publisher's request, Heinlein cut by 25% in length. Approximately 60,000 words were removed from the original manuscript, including some sharp criticism of American attitudes toward sex and religion. The book was marketed to a mainstream readership, and was the first science fiction novel to be listed on The New York Times Best Seller list for fiction. By 1997, over 100,000 copies of the hardback edition had been sold along with nearly five million copies of the paperback. None of his later novels would match this level of success.
• The 1991 version, retrieved from Heinlein's archives in the University of California, Santa Cruz, Special Collections Department by Heinlein's widow, Virginia, and published posthumously, which reproduces the original manuscript and restores all cuts. It came about because in 1989, Virginia renewed the copyright to Stranger and cancelled the existing publication contracts in accordance with the Copyright Act of 1976. Both Heinlein's agent and his publisher (which had new senior editors) agreed that the uncut version was better: readers are used to longer books, and what was seen as objectionable in 1961 was no longer so 30 years later.

Heinlein himself remarked in a letter he wrote to Oberon Zell-Ravenheart in 1972 that he thought his shorter, edited version was better. He wrote, "SISL was never censored by anyone in any fashion. The first draft was nearly twice as long as the published version. I cut it myself to bring it down to a commercial length. But I did not leave out anything of any importance; I simply trimmed all possible excess verbiage. Perhaps you have noticed that it reads "fast" despite its length; that is why. ... The original, longest version of SISL ... is really not worth your trouble, as it is the same story throughout—simply not as well told. With it is the brushpenned version which shows exactly what was cut out—nothing worth reading, that is. I learned to write for pulp magazines, in which one was paid by the yard rather than by the package; it was not until I started writing for the Saturday Evening Post that I learned the virtue of brevity."

Additionally, since Heinlein added material while he was editing the manuscript for the commercial release, the 1991 publication of the original manuscript is missing some material that was in the novel when it was first published.

Many editions exist:

• June 1, 1961, Putnam Publishing Group, hardcover, ISBN 0-399-10772-X
• Avon, NY, first paperback edition, 1962.
• 1965, New English Library Ltd, (London).
• March 1968, Berkley Medallion, paperback, ISBN 0-425-04688-5
• July 1970, New English Library Ltd, (London). 400 pages, paperback. (third 'new edition', August 1971 reprint, NEL 2844.)
• 1972, Capricorn Books, 408 pages, ISBN 0-399-50268-8
• October 1975, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-03067-9
• November 1977, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-03782-7
• July 1979, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-04377-0
• September 1980, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-04688-5
• July 1982, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-05833-6
• July 1983, Penguin Putnam, paperback, ISBN 0-425-06490-5
• January 1984, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-07142-1
• May 1, 1984, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-05216-8
• December 1984, Berkley Publishing Group, ISBN 0-425-08094-3
• November 1986, Berkley Publishing Group, paperback, ISBN 0-425-10147-9
• January 1991, original uncut edition, Ace/Putnam, hardcover, ISBN 0-399-13586-3
• May 3, 1992, original uncut edition, Hodder and Stoughton, mass market paperback, 655 pages, ISBN 0-450-54742-6
• 1995, Easton Press (MBI, Inc.), original uncut edition, leather bound hardcover, 525 pages
• August 1, 1995, ACE Charter, paperback, 438 pages, ISBN 0-441-79034-8
• April 1, 1996, Blackstone Audio, cassette audiobook, ISBN 0-7861-0952-1
• October 1, 1999, Sagebrush, library binding, ISBN 0-8085-2087-3
• June 1, 2002, Blackstone Audio, cassette audiobook, ISBN 0-7861-2229-3
• January 2003, Turtleback Books distributed by Demco Media, hardcover, ISBN 0-606-25126-X
• November 1, 2003, Blackstone Audio, CD audiobook, ISBN 0-7861-8848-0
• March 14, 2005, Hodder and Stoughton, paperback, 655 pages, ISBN 0-340-83795-0

Intuition

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A phrenological mapping of the brain – phrenology was among the first attempts to correlate mental functions with specific parts of the brain

 

Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning, or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired. Different writers give the word "intuition" a great variety of different meanings, ranging from direct access to unconscious knowledge, unconscious cognition, inner sensing, inner insight to unconscious pattern-recognition and the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.

The word intuition comes from the Latin verb intueri translated as "consider" or from the late middle English word intuit, "to contemplate".

Philosophy

Both Eastern and Western philosophers have studied the concept in great detail. Philosophy of mind deals with the concept of intuition.

Eastern philosophy

In the East intuition is mostly intertwined with religion and spirituality, and various meanings exist from different religious texts.

Hinduism

In Hinduism various attempts have been made to interpret the Vedic and other esoteric texts. 

For Sri Aurobindo intuition comes under the realms of knowledge by identity; he describes the psychological plane in humans (often referred to as mana in sanskrit) having two arbitrary natures, the first being imprinting of psychological experiences which is constructed through sensory information (mind seeking to become aware of external world). The second nature being the action when it seeks to be aware of itself, resulting in humans being aware of their existence or aware of being angry & aware of other emotions. He terms this second nature as knowledge by identity. He finds that at present as the result of evolution the mind has accustomed itself to depend upon certain physiological functioning and their reactions as its normal means of entering into relations with the outer material world. As a result, when we seek to know about the external world the dominant habit is through arriving at truths about things via what our senses convey to us. However, knowledge by identity, which we currently only give the awareness of human beings' existence, can be extended further to outside of ourselves resulting in intuitive knowledge.

He finds this intuitive knowledge was common to older humans (Vedic) and later was taken over by reason which currently organises our perception, thoughts and actions resulting from Vedic to metaphysical philosophy and later to experimental science. He finds that this process, which seems to be decent, is actually a circle of progress, as a lower faculty is being pushed to take up as much from a higher way of working. He finds when self-awareness in the mind is applied to one's self and the outer (other) -self, results in luminous self-manifesting identity; the reason also converts itself into the form of the self-luminous intuitional knowledge.

Osho believed consciousness of human beings to be in increasing order from basic animal instincts to intelligence and intuition, and humans being constantly living in that conscious state often moving between these states depending on their affinity. He also suggests living in the state of intuition is one of the ultimate aims of humanity.

Advaita vedanta (a school of thought) takes intuition to be an experience through which one can come in contact with an experience Brahman.

Buddhism

Buddhism finds intuition to be a faculty in the mind of immediate knowledge and puts the term intuition beyond the mental process of conscious thinking, as the conscious thought cannot necessarily access subconscious information, or render such information into a communicable form. In Zen Buddhism various techniques have been developed to help develop one's intuitive capability, such as koans – the resolving of which leads to states of minor enlightenment (satori). In parts of Zen Buddhism intuition is deemed a mental state between the Universal mind and one's individual, discriminating mind.

Islam

In Islam there are various scholars with varied interpretations of intuition (often termed as hadas (Arabic: حدس), hitting correctly on a mark), sometimes relating the ability of having intuitive knowledge to prophethood. Siháb al Din-al Suhrawadi, in his book Philosophy Of Illumination (ishraq), finds that intuition is a knowledge acquired through illumination and is mystical in nature and also suggests mystical contemplation (mushahada) on this to bring about correct judgments. while Ibn Sīnā finds the ability of having intuition as a "prophetic capacity" and terms it as a knowledge obtained without intentionally acquiring it. He finds that regular knowledge is based on imitation while intuitive knowledge is based on intellectual certitude.

Western philosophy

In the West, intuition does not appear as a separate field of study, and early mentions and definitions can be traced back to Plato. In his book Republic he tries to define intuition as a fundamental capacity of human reason to comprehend the true nature of reality. In his works Meno and Phaedo, he describes intuition as a pre-existing knowledge residing in the "soul of eternity", and a phenomenon by which one becomes conscious of pre-existing knowledge. He provides an example of mathematical truths, and posits that they are not arrived at by reason. He argues that these truths are accessed using a knowledge already present in a dormant form and accessible to our intuitive capacity. This concept by Plato is also sometimes referred to as anamnesis. The study was later continued by his followers.

In his book Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes refers to an intuition as a pre-existing knowledge gained through rational reasoning or discovering truth through contemplation. This definition is commonly referred to as rational intuition. Later philosophers, such as Hume, have more ambiguous interpretations of intuition. Hume claims intuition is a recognition of relationships (relation of time, place, and causation) while he states that "the resemblance" (recognition of relations) "will strike the eye" (which would not require further examination) but goes on to state, "or rather in mind"—attributing intuition to power of mind, contradicting the theory of empiricism.

Immanuel Kant finds intuition is thought of as basic sensory information provided by the cognitive faculty of sensibility (equivalent to what might loosely be called perception). Kant held that our mind casts all of our external intuitions in the form of space, and all of our internal intuitions (memory, thought) in the form of time. Intuitionism is a position advanced by Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer in philosophy of mathematics derived from Kant's claim that all mathematical knowledge is knowledge of the pure forms of the intuition—that is, intuition that is not empirical. Intuitionistic logic was devised by Arend Heyting to accommodate this position (and has been adopted by other forms of constructivism in general). It is characterized by rejecting the law of excluded middle: as a consequence it does not in general accept rules such as double negation elimination and the use of reductio ad absurdum to prove the existence of something.

Intuitions are customarily appealed to independently of any particular theory of how intuitions provide evidence for claims, and there are divergent accounts of what sort of mental state intuitions are, ranging from mere spontaneous judgment to a special presentation of a necessary truth. In recent years a number of philosophers, especially George Bealer have tried to defend appeals to intuition against Quinean doubts about conceptual analysis. A different challenge to appeals to intuition has recently come from experimental philosophers, who argue that appeals to intuition must be informed by the methods of social science.

The metaphilosophical assumption that philosophy depends on intuitions has recently been challenged by some philosophers. Timothy Williamson has argued that intuition plays no special role in philosophy practice, and that skepticism about intuition cannot be meaningfully separated from a general skepticism about judgment. On this view, there are no qualitative differences between the methods of philosophy and common sense, the sciences or mathematics.

Psychology

Freud

According to Sigmund Freud, knowledge could only be attained through the intellectual manipulation of carefully made observations and rejected any other means of acquiring knowledge such as intuition, and his findings could have been an analytic turn of his mind towards the subject.

Jung

In Carl Jung's theory of the ego, described in 1916 in Psychological Types, intuition is an "irrational function", opposed most directly by sensation, and opposed less strongly by the "rational functions" of thinking and feeling. Jung defined intuition as "perception via the unconscious": using sense-perception only as a starting point, to bring forth ideas, images, possibilities, ways out of a blocked situation, by a process that is mostly unconscious.

Jung said that a person in whom intuition is dominant, an "intuitive type", acts not on the basis of rational judgment but on sheer intensity of perception. An extraverted intuitive type, "the natural champion of all minorities with a future", orients to new and promising but unproven possibilities, often leaving to chase after a new possibility before old ventures have borne fruit, oblivious to his or her own welfare in the constant pursuit of change. An introverted intuitive type orients by images from the unconscious, ever exploring the psychic world of the archetypes, seeking to perceive the meaning of events, but often having no interest in playing a role in those events and not seeing any connection between the contents of the psychic world and him- or herself. Jung thought that extraverted intuitive types were likely entrepreneurs, speculators, cultural revolutionaries, often undone by a desire to escape every situation before it becomes settled and constraining—even repeatedly leaving lovers for the sake of new romantic possibilities. His introverted intuitive types were likely mystics, prophets, or cranks, struggling with a tension between protecting their visions from influence by others and making their ideas comprehensible and reasonably persuasive to others—a necessity for those visions to bear real fruit.

Modern psychology

In more-recent psychology, intuition can encompass the ability to know valid solutions to problems and decision making. For example, the recognition primed decision (RPD) model explains how people can make relatively fast decisions without having to compare options. Gary Klein found that under time pressure, high stakes, and changing parameters, experts used their base of experience to identify similar situations and intuitively choose feasible solutions. Thus, the RPD model is a blend of intuition and analysis. The intuition is the pattern-matching process that quickly suggests feasible courses of action. The analysis is the mental simulation, a conscious and deliberate review of the courses of action.

Instinct is often misinterpreted as intuition and its reliability considered to be dependent on past knowledge and occurrences in a specific area. For example, someone who has had more experiences with children will tend to have a better instinct about what they should do in certain situations with them. This is not to say that one with a great amount of experience is always going to have an accurate intuition.

Intuitive abilities were quantitatively tested at Yale University in the 1970s. While studying nonverbal communication, researchers noted that some subjects were able to read nonverbal facial cues before reinforcement occurred. In employing a similar design, they noted that highly intuitive subjects made decisions quickly but could not identify their rationale. Their level of accuracy, however, did not differ from that of non-intuitive subjects.

According to the works of Daniel Kahneman, intuition is the ability to automatically generate solutions without long logical arguments or evidence.

Colloquial usage

Intuition, as a gut feeling based on experience, has been found to be useful for business leaders for making judgement about people, culture and strategy. Law enforcement officers often claim to observe suspects and immediately "know" that they possess a weapon or illicit narcotic substances, which could also be action of instincts. Often unable to articulate why they reacted or what prompted them at the time of the event, they sometimes retrospectively can plot their actions based upon what had been clear and present danger signals. Such examples liken intuition to "gut feelings" and when viable illustrate preconscious activity.

Honours

Intuition Peak in Antarctica is so named "in appreciation of the role of scientific intuition for the advancement of human knowledge."