Doppelgänger
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- For other uses, see Doppelgänger (disambiguation).
A doppelgänger (pronunciation ) is the ghostly — in some cases, the physical — double of a living person. The word "doppelgänger" is a loanword from German, in which language it is written (as with any German noun) with an initial capital letter: Doppelgänger. The word derives from Doppel ("double") and Gänger ("goer").
In English, the word is conventionally uncapitalized ("doppelgänger"). It is also common to drop the German diacritic, umlaut, from the letter "ä," writing "doppelganger," although in German the correct spelling without the umlaut would actually be "Doppelgaenger."
In the vernacular, "Doppelgänger" has come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person—most commonly an "evil twin"—or to bilocation.
The word is also used to describe a phenomenon whereby one catches his own image out of the corner of his eye. In some traditions, seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. A doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives may sometimes bring bad luck, or indicate an approaching health problem.
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[edit] Scientific investigations
Shahar Arzy and colleagues of the University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland, unexpectedly reproduced an effect strongly reminiscent of the Doppelganger phenomena via the electrical 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, who did not speak nor move and whose body posture was identical to her own. The other person was located exactly behind her, almost touching and therefore within the bed that the patient was lying on.
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 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 that 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 10mA, at the left temporoparietal junction.
Arzy and 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 colleagues suggest that the phenomenon they created is seen in certain mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, particularly when accompanied by paranoia, persecution and alien control. Nevertheless, the effects reported by Arzy and colleagues are highly reminiscent of the Doppelganger phenomenon. Accordingly, some reports of the Doppelganger phenomenon may well be due to failure of the left temporoparietal junction.
See Monothematic delusion for a detailed description of various psychological problems including Syndrome of subjective doubles — a scientific view of the Doppelganger phenomena.
[edit] Cybernetics
In the midst of a discussion about the applicability of his Conversation Theory or Interactions of Actors Theory, Gordon Pask, the cybernetician, would sometimes startle his clents and co-workers by saying, "There are no Doppelgangers." Pask insisted that the dynamics of coherent interacting bodies are different, and that this makes the construction of identical copies impossible.
The teleportation protocol cannot defeat this, because the copy, once produced, will exist in a different context from that of its parent, and thus will be subjected to different forces. This is an important principle of cybernetics, because these differences, in both living and inorganic matter, though they may be very small, produce, over geological time, the differentiation in matter and life that we see around us.
[edit] Folklore
The doppelgängers of folklore cast no shadow, and have no reflection in a mirror or in water. They are supposed to provide advice to the person they shadow, but this advice can be misleading or malicious. They can also, in rare instances, plant ideas in their victim's mind or appear before friends and relatives, causing confusion. In many cases once someone has viewed his own doppelgänger he is doomed to be haunted by images of his ghostly counter-part.
Other folklore says that when a person's doppelgänger is seen, the person him/herself will die shortly. It is considered unlucky to try to communicate with such a doppelgänger.
[edit] Famous reports
- Emilie Sagée was a 19th-century schoolteacher whose doppelgänger's public appearances were recorded by Robert Dale Owen after having been reported to him by Julie von Güldenstubbe[1]. (The story is described in more detail below.)
- Guy de Maupassant recorded his own doppelgänger experiences in his story, Lui (The light continent).
- It is sometimes claimed that Percy Bysshe Shelley, English atheist and poet, met his doppelgänger, presaging his own death. Shelley, however, met this "doppelgänger" in a dream[2], not in real life.
- John Donne, the English metaphysical poet, apparently [citations needed] met his wife's doppelgänger in Paris, presaging the death of his unborn daughter.[citations needed]
- Abraham Lincoln told his wife that, soon after he was elected president, he saw two faces of himself in a mirror, one deathly pale. His wife believed this to mean that he would be elected to a second term but would not survive it (Sandburg, 195).
- Rosalyn Greene claims that the doppelgänger phenomenon, via bilocation, is responsible for reports of werewolves and other shapeshifters (Greene, 87).
- Richard Rossi, the maverick minister and Hollywood film-maker, allegedly told police that a man who resembled him had attacked his wife. According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, he allegedly speculated that the mysterious incident was a Satanic counterattack prompted by his work as an exorcist. Rossi stood trial for the assault, with a resulting hung jury, partly because both Rossi's wife and an eyewitness, John Fair, had confirmed the story.([3])
[edit] Emilie Sagée
Robert Dale Owen was responsible for writing down the singular case of Emilie Sagée. He was told this anecdote by Julie von Güldenstubbe, a Latvian aristocrat. Von Güldenstubbe reported that in the year 1845–46, at the age of 13, she witnessed, along with audiences of between 13 and 42 children, her 32-year-old French teacher Sagée bilocate, in broad daylight, inside her school (Pensionat von Neuwelcke). The actions of Sagée's doppelgänger included:
- Mimicking writing and eating, but with nothing in its hands.
- Moving independently of Sagée, and remaining motionless while she moved.
- Appearing to be in full health while Sagée was badly ill.
Apparently also, the doppelgänger exerted resistance to the touch, but was non-physical (one[4] girl passed through the doppelgänger's body).
[edit] Fiction
Doppelgängers appear in a variety of fictional works. In its simplest incarnation, mistaken identity is a classic trope used in literature, from Twelfth Night to A Tale of Two Cities. In these cases, the characters look similar for perfectly normal reasons, such as being siblings or simple coincidence.
Fantasy and some mythology offer more mystic explanations, where the double is created as a kind of curse or otherwise through magic. These doppelgängers are typically, but not always, evil in some way. The double typically impersonates the victim and goes about ruining them, for instance through committing crimes or insulting the victim's friends. Sometimes, the double even tries to kill the original. Some works of fantasy include shapeshifters, as either talented individuals or as a separate race, who can mimic any person.
Another variant, usually seen in science fiction, involves clones. While genetic cloning in actual science may create a genetically identical new being, futuristic variants in fiction sometimes clone living beings in their entirety, albeit sometimes with modified memories and motives.
The idea of doppelgängers is also seen in fiction involving time travel and parallel universes. In this case, the doppelgänger really "is" the doubled person, but from a different timeline or different version of the universe.
