Jamais vu.
That’s right. I said it. It sounds a little like “Jammy Voo.” With a drunk “J” at the beginning.
It is kind of the opposite of déjà vu. I don’t know if all people experience déjà vu, but I sure do. It is kind of a weird “repetition” of events that occurs in the mind. It is when we believe we have experienced a certain situation in the past. And then it leaves you with an weird sense of “pastness.”
I’m not sure of the cause. But in an article I recently read, they alluded to the notion that déjà vu is actually a window into the workings of our memory system. I’m not sure about that because the things I have strangely “relived” in déjà vu have never happened to me before, but they have. It gives me shivers.
Any way. What most people don’t know is that the opposite of déjà vu is “jamais vu.” I sure didn’t.
Jamais vu is when something you know to be familiar feels unreal or brand new in some way.
Some examples of jamais vu may involve looking at a familiar face and finding it suddenly unusual or unknown. Or sometimes, musicians get this momentarily, like when they lose their way in a piece of music that they normally know like the back of their hand. Another example might be when you are going to a familiar place and you become disorientated or you see it like you’ve never seen it before.
Supposedly, it is an experience which is even rarer than déjà vu and perhaps even more unusual and unsettling. I’m pretty sure it has never happened to me, except for in those days long ago when I had too much to drink. But that wasn’t jamais vu. That was called “too much to drink.”
Although, one example that they give seems to be relevant. It is when you write a word correctly like ‘appetite’ but you have to keep looking at the word over and over again because you are having second thoughts that you might have spelled it wrong.
They cited a lot of experiments they did around this whole thing.
But the bottom line came down to how our brains handle repetition. Apparently, our minds click over to a feeling of “loss” when we experience extreme repetition. Jamais vu is a signal to us that something has become too automatic, too fluent, too repetitive. And when we experience jamais vu, it helps us “snap out” of our current processing, and the feeling of unreality is in fact a reality check.
The scientists who conducted this study say it makes sense that this has to happen in our brains. Our cognitive systems must stay flexible. Our brains have to direct our attention to wherever it is needed rather than getting lost in repetitive tasks for too long. And that is jamais vu.
Has it ever happened to you?
Rinse. And repeat.
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“Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.” – Zig Ziglar
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“Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life.” – Søren Kierkegaard
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“Repetition is the soul of routine.” – Chris Bailey
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What kind of “vu” do you do?
