What is a Doppelgänger?

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