In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically
representing evil or misfortune. In modern vernacular, the word has come to
refer to any double or look-alike of a person.
The
word also is used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no
chance that it could have been a reflection. Doppelgängers often are perceived
as a sinister form of bilocation and
are regarded by some to be harbingers of
bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or
relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an
omen of death.
In Norse mythology, a vardøger is
a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their
actions in advance. In Finnish mythology, this is called having an etiäinen, i.e., "a firstcomer". In Ancient Egyptian
mythology, a ka was
a tangible "spirit double" having the same memories and feeling as
the original person. In one Egyptian myth titled "The Greek
Princess," an Egyptian view of the Trojan War, a ka of Helen was
used to mislead Paris of Troy, helping to stop the war. In some myths, the
doppelgänger is a version of the Ankou,
a personification of death.
Spelling
The
word doppelgänger is a loanword from
German: Doppel (double) and Gänger (walker). The singular and plural forms are the
same. It was first used by Jean Paul in
the novel Siebenkäs (1796),
and explained by a footnote.
As
is true for all other common nouns in
German, the word is written with an initial capital letter. In English, the word is
conventionally uncapitalized (doppelgänger). It is also common to drop
thediacritic umlaut,
writing "doppelganger."
Scientific and philosophical investigations
Left temporoparietal junction
In
September 2006, it was reported in Nature that
Shahar Arzy and colleagues of the University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland,
unexpectedly had reproduced an effect strongly reminiscent of the doppelgänger
phenomenon via the electromagnetic
stimulation of a
patient's brain. They applied focal electrical stimulation to a patient's left temporoparietal
junction while she lay
flat on a bed. The patient immediately felt the presence of another person in
her "extrapersonal space." Other than epilepsy, for which the patient was being treated,
she was psychologically fit.
The
other person was described as young, of indeterminate sex, silent, motionless,
and with a body posture identical to her own. The other person was located
exactly behind her, almost touching and therefore within the bed on which the
patient was lying.
A
second electrical stimulation was applied with slightly more intensity, while
the patient was sitting up with her arms folded. This time the patient felt the
presence of a "man" who had his arms wrapped around her. She
described the sensation as highly unpleasant and electrical stimulation was
stopped.
Finally,
when the patient was seated, electrical stimulation was applied while the
patient was asked to perform a language test with a set of flash cards. On this occasion the patient reported
the presence of a sitting person, displaced behind her and to the right. She
said the presence was attempting to interfere with the test: "He wants to
take the card; he doesn’t want me to read." Again, the effect was
disturbing and electrical stimulation was ceased.
Similar effects were found for different positions
and postures when electrical stimulation exceeded 10 mA,
at the left temporoparietal junction.
Arzy
and his colleagues suggest that the left temporoparietal junction of the brain
evokes the sensation of self image—body location, position, posture etc. When
the left temporoparietal junction is disturbed, the sensation of
self-attribution is broken and may be replaced by the sensation of a foreign
presence or copy of oneself displaced nearby. This copy mirrors the real
person's body posture, location and position. Arzy and his colleagues suggest
that the phenomenon they created is seen in certain mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, particularly when accompanied by paranoia, delusions of persecution and of alien
control. Nevertheless, the effects reported are highly reminiscent of the
doppelgänger phenomenon. Accordingly, some reports of doppelgängers may well be
due to failure of the left temporoparietal junction.
Notable reports
Abraham Lincoln
Carl Sandburg's biography contains the following:
A dream
or illusion had haunted Lincoln at
times through the winter. On the evening of his election he had thrown himself
on one of the haircloth sofas at home, just after the first telegrams of
November 7 had told him he was elected President, and looking into a bureau
mirror across the room he saw himself full length, but with two faces. It
bothered him; he got up; the illusion vanished; but when he lay down again
there in the glass again were two faces, one paler than the other. He got up
again, mixed in the election excitement, forgot about it; but it came back, and
haunted him. He told his wife about it; she worried too. A few days later he tried
it once more and the illusion of the two faces again registered to his eyes.
But that was the last; the ghost since then wouldn't come back, he told his
wife, who said it was a sign he would be elected to a second term, and the
death pallor of one face meant he wouldn't live through his second term.
This is
adapted from Washington in
Lincoln's Time (1895) by Noah Brooks, who claimed that he had heard it from
Lincoln himself on 9 November 1864, at the time of his re-election, and that he
had printed an account "directly after." He also claimed that the
story was confirmed by Mary Todd Lincoln, and partially confirmed by
Private Secretary John Hay (who
thought it dated from Lincoln's nomination, not his election). Brooks' version
is as follows (in Lincoln's own words):
It was
just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast
all day and there had been a great "hurrah, boys," so that I was well
tired out, and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my
chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it (and
here he got up and placed furniture to illustrate the position), and looking in
that glass I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed
had two separate and distinct images, the tip
of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a
little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the
illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer, if
possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little
paler — say five shades — than the other. I got up, and the thing melted away,
and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it — nearly,
but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a
little pang as if something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home again
that night I told my wife about it, and a few days afterward I made the
experiment again, when (with a laugh), sure enough! the thing came back again;
but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once
tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was somewhat worried about
it. She thought it was a "sign" that I was to be elected to a second
term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I
should not see life through the last term.
Lincoln
was known to be superstitious, and
old mirrors will occasionally produce double images; whether this Janus illusion
can be counted as a doppelgänger is perhaps debatable, though probably no more
than other such claims of doppelgängers. An alternate consideration, however,
suggests that Lincoln suffered vertical strabismus in
his left eye, a disorder which could induce visions
of a vertically displaced image.
In popular culture
Doppelgängers,
as dark doubles of individual identities, appear in a variety of fictional
works from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's
"The
Double" to Al-Tayyib Salih's Season
of Migration to the North to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. In its simplest incarnation,
mistaken identity is a classic trope used in literature, from Twelfth Night to A Tale of Two Cities.
But in these cases, the characters look similar for perfectly normal reasons,
such as being siblings or simple coincidence.
Some
stories offer supernatural explanations for doubles. These doppelgängers are typically,
but not always, evil in some way. The double will often
impersonate the victim and go about ruining them, for instance through
committing crimes or insulting the victim's friends. Sometimes, the double even
tries to kill the original. In José Saramago's 2001 novel The Double (original Portuguese title O Homem Duplicado), both men's
baser instincts come to the surface and they attempt to take advantage of each
other. The torment is occasionally earned; for instance, in Edgar Allan Poe's short story "William Wilson,"
the protagonist of questionable morality is dogged by his doppelgänger most
tenaciously when his morals fail. A similar device is employed in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's
short story "The
Double: A Petersburg Poem".
In Philip Roth's novel "Operational
Shylock," the author and protagonist travels to Israel in order to
confront a doppelgänger. The faux Roth is revealed to be a surgically-altered
impostor bent on using the author's notoriety to advance a nefarious political
agenda. Although technically not a doppelgänger, the imposture threatens Roth's
self-identity and forces him to undergo a personal transformation, both themes
associated with Doppelgangers in fiction.
Doppelgängers are also a common theme in cinema,
most notably in Henry Selick's Coraline (film), Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Doppelganger from 2003, Avi Nesher's 1993 film of the same
name starring Drew Barrymore, The Abandoned (2006
film), and Dan Asenlund's 2011 short film Four Degrees of Jonas Rydell,
as well as in many TV shows. Primer (film) (2004)
featured doppelgangers which were created by way of a time machine. Solaris (1972 film) and Solaris (2002 film) had "manifestations" similar
to doppelgangers on a space ship. The Australian film Lake Mungo (film) features a portent of death to come.
Source link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger
MULTIPLE
CHOICE
Directions:
Select the correct answer and write the letter on the space provided before
each number.
____________1. The word also is used to describe the
sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no
chance that it could have been a
reflection.
a.
Etiäinen
b. Vardøger
c. Doppelgänger
____________2. The word doppelgänger was first used
by Jean Paul in the novel _______.
a. Siebenkäs (1796)
b. Operational
Shylock (1998)
c. The Double (2001)
_____________3. In Norse mythology, a _________ is a ghostly double who precedes a living person
and is seen performing their actions in advance
a. Vardøger
b. Ka of Helen
c. Etiäinen
_____________4. The torment is
occasionally earned; for instance, in Edgar Allan Poe's short story _________, the protagonist of
questionable morality is dogged by his doppelgänger most tenaciously when his
morals fail.
a. The
Double: A Petersburg Poem
b. William
Wilson
c. Twelfth Night to A
Tale of Two Cities
___________5.
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double
of a living person, typically representing evil or ___________.
a. de
javu
b. premonition
c. misfortune
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