The Word Was in the Question

A few months before the entrance exams for the École Polytechnique, a twenty-year-old is walking along the boulevard Haussmann, between the avenue de Friedland and the place Shakespeare. Suddenly it seems to him that he passed this way "plusieurs siècles auparavant," several centuries before. Then, he writes, "j'eus le sentiment que j'assistais à mes actions commises ; elles étaient inévitables": I had the feeling that I was watching my own completed actions; they were inevitable.

The account is on page 176 of L'illusion de fausse reconnaissance, which Eugène Bernard-Leroy published in Paris in 1898. It is Observation 47, headed "A. L..., H. 20 ans. Élève à l'École Polytechnique." Bernard-Leroy built his collection from a questionnaire with numbered questions. It appeared in French in the Revue de l'hypnotisme and in English in the Proceedings of the Medico-legal Society of New York, and a thousand further copies were handed out. About sixty-seven replies came back; he used forty-nine.

Ten years later the sentence turns up in one of the most widely read texts on déjà vu. In "Le souvenir du présent et la fausse reconnaissance," published in the Revue philosophique in 1908 and collected in L'Énergie spirituelle in 1919, Bergson sets out to show how uniform descriptions of the experience are. He has in hand a self-observation written for him by "un homme de lettres, habile à s'étudier lui-même," a man of letters practised at studying himself. This man had never heard of the illusion and believed he was alone in having it. His description runs to about ten sentences, and every one of them can be found, almost word for word, in observations already in print. Bergson is at least pleased to have found one new expression. The writer says the experience is dominated by a sense of "inévitabilité," "comme si aucune puissance au monde ne pouvait arrêter les paroles et les actes qui vont venir": as if no power on earth could stop the words and deeds about to come.

Then, rereading Bernard-Leroy, Bergson finds the same word in one of the observations, and he quotes the student on the boulevard Haussmann. His conclusion is firm: "on peut se demander s'il existe une illusion aussi nettement stéréotypée," one may wonder whether any illusion is so plainly stereotyped. He touched the passage up between the two versions. In 1908 he spoke of "une expression identique" and quoted "mes actions commises"; in 1919 it becomes "le même mot," the same word, and "commises" is gone. The proof narrows to a single word. In both editions the footnote points to page 176.

Turn back one page. On page 175, A. L.'s answers are listed by number, as on the form, and among them is this: "32 et 32 bis. - La question n'a pas été comprise." The question was not understood. Next comes number 36, which asked for a full description of the clearest cases, and that is where his two accounts begin.

Question 32 is printed on page 22: "La fausse reconnaissance s'est-elle jamais accompagnée chez vous de cette impression que vous assistiez comme simple témoin au déroulement inévitable et involontaire de vos propres actes, mouvements, pensées…" Has false recognition ever come with the impression that you were present as a mere witness at the inevitable and involuntary unfolding of your own acts, movements, thoughts?

Set side by side, the words line up. The student says he did not understand the question, and then, writing freely, he uses its vocabulary: "assistais," "actions," "inévitables." In his first account, about an evening walk home near the Arc de Triomphe, he had already written "J'assistais en même temps à mes mouvements et à mes pensées," I was watching my movements and my thoughts at the same time. On the questionnaire, 32 comes before 36. We do not know in what order he filled in his answers, or whether he read the French or the English version. We do know what Bernard-Leroy thought of his instrument. He had feared it would be hard going for people unused to "les finesses d'analyse de la psychologie," and he reports that on the whole the questions were well understood.

The student is not alone. On page 207, Observation 61 answers question 32 by copying it out almost verbatim, inside quotation marks: "La fausse reconnaissance s'est parfois accompagnée de ce sentiment que j'assistais comme simple témoin au déroulement inévitable et involontaire de mes actes, comme à ceux d'une personne étrangère." On page 182, another respondent answers the same question by quoting a page he had written earlier: "j'assistais en simple spectateur à ma propre vie," I watched my own life as a mere spectator.

And then there is Bergson himself. Later in the same essay, describing the experience in his own voice, he writes: "On assiste à ses propres mouvements, à ses pensées, à ses actions." One watches one's own movements, thoughts, actions. The footnote sends the reader to pages 182, 185, 176 and 232 of Bernard-Leroy. Three of those pages hold answers to questions 32 and 33; the fourth is A. L.'s. The three nouns are the three nouns of question 32, in a different order.

That much is documented; what follows is our reading. None of it refutes Bergson, or casts doubt on déjà vu being real and strikingly alike from one person to the next. The man of letters who spoke of "inévitabilité" had, by Bergson's account, never seen the questionnaire. "Inevitable" may also simply be the right word, so right that whoever drafted question 32 may have taken it from accounts he had already read. Still, the match Bergson chose as his proof rests on a page where the word had passed through a question before it reached an answer. The stereotype may well live in the experience. Part of its vocabulary, and this part can be documented, was already on the form.

Among the forty-nine replies is one from a woman, Observation 76. Asked under question 36 to describe her clearest cases, she wrote only: "Décrire ? Je craindrais d'inventer malgré moi." Describe? I would be afraid of making things up without meaning to. Bernard-Leroy prints it without comment on page 232, one of the pages Bergson would cite ten years later to show how people watch themselves act.