A
doppelgänger is the
ghostA ghost has been defined as the disembodied spirit or soul of a deceased person, although in popular usage the term refers only to the apparition of such a person...
ly double of a living person, a sinister form of
bilocationBilocation, or sometimes multilocation, is a term used to describe the ability/instances in which an individual or object is said to be, or appears to be, located in two distinct places at the same instant in time...
.
In the
vernacularVernacular is the native language of a country or a locality. In general linguistics, it is used to describe local languages as opposed to lingua francas, official standards or global languages. It is sometimes applied to nonstandard dialects of a global language...
, the word "doppelgänger" has come to refer (as in
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
) to any double or
look-alikeA look-alike is a living person who closely resembles another living person. In popular Western culture, a look-alike is a person who bears a close physical resemblance to a celebrity, politician or member of royalty. Many look-alikes earn a living by making guest appearances at public events or...
of a person. The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in
peripheral vision Peripheral vision is a part of vision that occurs outside the very center of gaze. There is a broad set of non-central points in the field of view that is included in the notion of peripheral vision...
, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. They are generally regarded as
harbingerA harbinger is a sign of things to come. Throughout history and literature, harbingers and omens figure prominently, and are responsible for major decisions which have altered the course of both....
s 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
omenAn omen is a phenomenon that is believed to foretell the future, often signifying the advent of change. Omens may be considered "good" or "bad", but the term is more often used in a foreboding sense, as with the word "ominous".-In ancient Rome:Ancient Roman religion employed two distinct types of...
of
deathDeath is the termination of the biological functions that define a living organism. It refers to both a particular event and to the condition that results thereby. The true nature of the latter has for millennia been a central concern of the world's religious traditions and of philosophical...
. In
Norse mythologyNorse, North Germanic, or Scandinavian mythology comprises the myths of North Germanic pre-Christian religion.Most of the written sources for Norse mythology were assembled in medieval Iceland in Old Norse, notably as the Edda....
, a
vardøgerThe vardøger or vardøgr is a spirit predecessor, from Norwegian folklore. Stories typically include instances that are nearly déjà vu in substance, but in reverse, where a spirit with the subject's footsteps, voice, scent, or appearance and overall demeanor precedes them in a location or activity,...
is a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance.
Spelling
The word "doppelgänger" is a
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another.-General:By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept, whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.The word loanword is itself a calque of the German...
. It derives from
Doppel (double) and
Gänger (goer),. As is true for all other common nouns in German, the word is written with an initial capital letter. The
etymologyEtymology is the study of the history of words and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages, and texts about the languages, to gather knowledge about how words were used at earlier stages, and...
of the word is usually traced to the 1796 novel
SiebenkäsSiebenkäs is a German Romantic novel by Jean Paul, published in three volumes between 1796-1797 in Berlin. As is common for Romantic novels of the period, the original title Flower, Fruit and Thorn Pieces; or, the Married Life, Death and Wedding of Siebenkäs, Poor Man's Lawyer is somewhat verbose,...
, by
Jean PaulJean Paul , born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, was a German Romantic writer, best known for his humorous novels and stories.-Life and work:...
, in which the term is qualified by a
footnoteA footnote is a note of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of the text, or both...
.
In
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
, the word is conventionally uncapitalized (
doppelgänger). It is also common to drop the
diacriticA diacritic is an ancillary glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective...
umlautThe word umlaut is the name of a type of sound shift in spoken language and of the diacritic mark used to represent it orthographically. The diacritic mark comprises a pair of dots or lines placed over the letter that represents the affected vowel sound. When the letter is an i, the diacritic...
, writing "doppelg
anger." The correct alternative German spelling is "Doppelg
aenger." (Notice that in German itself the Ä is a normal letter and substituting it with AE is an orthographic mistake unless the Ä is not available.)
Percy Bysshe Shelley
On 8 July 1822,
Percy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded among the finest lyric poets in the English language...
, English poet, drowned in the Bay of Spezia near
LericiLerici is a town and commune in the province of La Spezia in Liguria , part of the Italian Riviera. Its nearest bay is the Bay of Lerici. The town is connected by ferry to the Cinque Terre and Portovenere....
. On 15 August, while staying at
PisaPisa is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the Arno River on the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...
, Percy's wife
Mary ShelleyMary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
wrote a letter to Maria Gisborne in which she relayed Percy's claims to her that he had met his own doppelgänger. A week after Mary's nearly fatal
miscarriageMiscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the embryo or fetus is incapable of surviving, generally defined in humans at prior to 20 weeks of gestation...
, in the early hours of 23 June, Percy had had a
nightmareA nightmare is an unpleasant dream. Nightmares cause a strong unpleasant emotional response from the sleeper, typically fear or horror. The dream may contain a situation of extreme danger, or sensations of pain, bad events, falling, drowning, being raped, becoming disabled, losing loved ones,...
about the house collapsing in a flood, and
- ... talking it over the next morning he told me that he had had many visions lately — he had seen the figure of himself which met him as he walked on the terrace & said to him — "How long do you mean to be content" — No very terrific words & certainly not prophetic of what has occurred. But Shelley had often seen these figures when ill; but the strangest thing is that Mrs Williams saw him. Now Jane though a woman of sensibility, has not much imagination & is not in the slightest degree nervous — neither in dreams or otherwise. She was standing one day, the day before I was taken ill, [15 June] at a window that looked on the Terrace with Trelawny — it was day — she saw as she thought Shelley pass by the window, as he often was then, without a coat or jacket — he passed again — now as he passed both times the same way — and as from the side towards which he went each time there was no way to get back except past the window again (except over a wall twenty feet from the ground) she was struck at seeing him pass twice thus & looked out & seeing him no more she cried — "Good God can Shelley have leapt from the wall? Where can he be gone?" Shelley, said Trelawny — "No Shelley has past — What do you mean?" Trelawny says that she trembled exceedingly when she heard this & it proved indeed that Shelley had never been on the terrace & was far off at the time she saw him.
Percy Shelley's drama
Prometheus Unbound (1820) contains the following passage in Act I: "Ere Babylon was dust, / The Magus Zoroaster, my dear child, / Met his own image walking in the garden. / That apparition, sole of men, he saw. / For know there are two worlds of life and death: / One that which thou beholdest; but the other / Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit / The shadows of all forms that think and live / Till death unite them and they part no more...."
John Donne
Izaak WaltonIzaak Walton was an English writer. Best known as the author of The Compleat Angler, he also wrote a number of short biographies which have been collected under the title of Walton's Lives.-Biography:...
claimed that
John DonneJohn Donne, "dun" was an English Jacobean poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period. His works are notable for their realistic and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and...
, the English metaphysical poet, saw his wife's doppelgänger in 1612 in Paris, on the same night as the stillbirth of their daughter.
- Two days after their arrival there, Mr. Donne was left alone, in that room in which Sir Robert, and he, and some other friends had dined together. To this place Sir Robert returned within half an hour; and, as he left, so he found Mr. Donne alone; but, in such ecstacy, and so altered as to his looks, as amazed Sir Robert to behold him in so much that he earnestly desired Mr. Donne to declare befallen him in the short time of his absence? to which, Mr. Donne was not able to make a present answer: but, after a long and perplext pause, did at last say, I have seen a dreadful Vision since I saw you: I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms: this, I have seen since I saw you. To which, Sir Robert replied; Sure Sir, you have slept since I saw you; and, this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake. To which Mr. Donnes reply was: I cannot be surer that I now live, then that I have not slept since I saw you: and am, as sure, that at her second appearing, she stopped, looked me in the face, and vanished.
This account first appears in the edition of
Life of Dr John Donne published in 1675, and is attributed to "a Person of Honour... told with such circumstances, and such asseveration, that... I verily believe he that told it me, did himself believe it to be true." At the time Donne was indeed extremely worried about his pregnant wife, and was going through severe illness himself. However, R. C. Bald points out that Walton's account "is riddled with inaccuracies. He says that Donne crossed from London to Paris with the Drurys in twelve days, and that the vision occurred two days later; the servant sent to London to make inquiries found Mrs Donne still confined to her bed in Drury House. Actually, of course, Donne did not arrive in Paris until more than three months after he left England, and his wife was not in London but in the
Isle of WightThe Isle of Wight is an English island and a county, located 3-5 miles from the south coast of the mainland, in the English Channel. It is separated from mainland England by the Solent and is situated south of the county of Hampshire...
. The still-born child was buried on 24 January.... Yet as late as 14 April Donne in Paris was still ignorant of his wife's ordeal." In January, Donne was still at
AmiensAmiens is a city and commune in northern France, north of Paris. It is the capital of the Somme department in Picardie.-History:The Paleolithic culture named Acheulean was named for its first identified site, in Saint-Acheul, a suburb of Amiens...
. His letters do not support the story as given.
Abraham Lincoln
Carl SandburgCarl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
's biography contains the following:
- A dream or illusion had haunted Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery...
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 6 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 BrooksNoah Brooks was a journalist and editor who worked for newspapers in Sacramento, San Francisco, Newark, and New York, and authored a major biography of Abraham Lincoln based on close personal observation. Born in Castine, Maine, he moved to Dixon, Illinois in 1856, where he became involved in the...
, 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 LincolnMary Ann Todd Lincoln was the wife of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and was First Lady of the United States from 1861 to 1865.-Life before the White House:...
, and partially confirmed by Private Secretary
John HayJohn Milton Hay was an American statesman, diplomat, author, journalist, and private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln.-Early life:...
(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
JanusIn Roman mythology, Janus was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings. His most prominent remnant in modern culture is his namesake, the month of January, which begins the new year. He is most often depicted as having two faces or heads, facing in opposite directions...
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
strabismusStrabismus is a condition in which the eyes are not properly aligned with each other...
in his left eye, a disorder which could induce visions of a vertically displaced image.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Near the end of Book XI of his autobiography,
Dichtung und Wahrheit ("Truth and Fiction"), Goethe wrote, almost in passing:
- Amid all this pressure and confusion I could not forego seeing Frederica once more. Those were painful days, the memory of which has not remained with me. When I reached her my hand from my horse, the tears stood in her eyes; and I felt very uneasy. I now rode along the foot-path toward Drusenheim
Drusenheim is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Alsace in north-eastern France.-Notable people:*Jacques Gachot : Alsatian artist-painter and illustrator, member of the "Groupe de Mai"-References:*...
, and here one of the most singular forebodings took possession of me. I saw, not with the eyes of the body, but with those of the mind, my own figure coming toward me, on horseback, and on the same road, attired in a dress which I had never worn, — it was pike-gray [hecht-grau], with somewhat of gold. As soon as I shook myself out of this dream, the figure had entirely disappeared. It is strange, however, that, eight years afterward, I found myself on the very road, to pay one more visit to Frederica, in the dress of which I had dreamed, and which I wore, not from choice, but by accident. However, it may be with matters of this kind generally, this strange illusion in some measure calmed me at the moment of parting. The pain of quitting for ever noble AlsaceAlsace is the fourth-smallest of the 26 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the sixth-most densely populated region in France , with 222 inhabitants per km²...
, with all I had gained in it, was softened; and, having at last escaped the excitement of a farewell, I, on a peaceful and quiet journey, pretty well regained my self-possession.
This is a rare example of a doppelgänger which is both benign and reassuring.
Emilie Sagée
Robert Dale OwenRobert Dale Owen was a longtime exponent in his adopted United States of the socialist doctrines of his father, Robert Owen, as well as a politician in the Democratic Party....
was responsible for writing down the singular case of Emilie Sagée. He was told this anecdote by Julie von Güldenstubbe, a
LatviaLatvia , officially the Republic of Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , and to the southeast by Belarus . Across the Baltic Sea to the west lies Sweden...
n
aristocratAristocracy is a form of government, in which a few of the most prominent citizens rule. This may be a hereditary elite, or it may be by a system of cooption where a council of prominent citizens add leading soldiers, merchants, land owners, priests, and lawyers to their number...
. 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
bilocateBilocation, or sometimes multilocation, is a term used to describe the ability/instances in which an individual or object is said to be, or appears to be, located in two distinct places at the same instant in time...
, 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 at a time when Sagée was badly ill.
Apparently, the doppelgänger also exerted resistance to the touch, but was non-physical (one girl passed through the doppelgänger's body).
Left temporoparietal junction
In September 2006 it was reported in
NatureNature is a prominent British scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869. Most scientific journals are now highly specialized, and Nature is among the few journals that still publish original research articles across a wide range of scientific...
that Shahar Arzy and colleagues of the University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland, had unexpectedly reproduced an effect strongly reminiscent of the doppelgänger phenomenon via the
electromagnetic stimulationTranscranial magnetic stimulation is a noninvasive method to excite neurons in the brain: weak electric currents are induced in the tissue by rapidly changing magnetic fields...
of a patient's brain. They applied focal electrical stimulation to a patient's
left temporoparietal junctionThe temporoparietal junction is an area of the brain where the temporal and parietal lobes meet, at the posterior end of the Sylvian fissure. This area is known to play a crucial role in self-other distinction processes and theory of mind...
while she lay flat on a bed. The patient immediately felt the presence of another person in her "extrapersonal space." Other than
epilepsyEpilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by recurrent unprovoked seizures...
, 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
mAThe ampere is the SI unit of electric current. The ampere, in practice often shortened to amp, is an SI base unit, and is named after André-Marie Ampère, one of the main discoverers of electromagnetism....
, 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
schizophreniaSchizophrenia , from the Greek roots skhizein and phrēn, phren- is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality...
, particularly when accompanied by
paranoiaParanoia is a thought process heavily influenced by excessive anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. In the original Greek, παράνοια simply means madness...
, 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.
See
monothematic delusionA monothematic delusion is a delusional state that only concerns one particular topic. This is contrasted by what is sometimes called multi-thematic or polythematic delusions where the person has a range of delusions . These disorders can occur within the context of schizophrenia or dementia or...
for a detailed description of various psychological problems including the
syndrome of subjective doublesThe syndrome of subjective doubles is a rare delusional misidentification syndrome in which a person experiences the delusion that he or she has a double or Doppelgänger with the same appearance, but usually with different character traits and leading a life of its own. Sometimes the patient has...
, which may be related to the doppelgänger. See also
out-of-body experienceAn out-of-body experience , is an experience that typically involves a sensation of floating outside of one's body and, in some cases, perceiving one's physical body from a place outside one's body...
.
In fiction
Doppelgängers, as dark doubles of individual identities, appear in a variety of fictional works from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's
The DoubleThe Double: A Petersburg Poem is a novella written by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The novella was first published in 1846. The Double deals with the internal psychological struggle of its main character, Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin...
to Al-Tayyib Salih's
Season of Migration to the NorthSeason of Migration to the North is a classic post-colonial Sudanese novel by the late novelist Al-Tayyib Salih...
to
Ralph EllisonRalph Waldo Ellison was an African-American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison was best known for his novel Invisible Man , which won the National Book Award in 1953...
's
Invisible ManInvisible Man is a novel written by Ralph Ellison, and the only one that he published during his lifetime. It won him the National Book Award in 1953...
. In its simplest incarnation, mistaken identity is a classic trope used in literature, from
Twelfth Night to
A Tale of Two CitiesA Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With 200 million copies sold, it is the most printed original English book, the most printed and among the most famous works of fiction.It depicts the plight of the French...
. 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,
evilEvil, in many cultures, is a broad term used to describe what are seen as subjectively harmful deeds that are labeled as such to steer moral support. Evil is usually contrasted with good, which describes acts that are subjectively beneficial to the observer. In some religions, evil is an active...
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. The torment is occasionally earned; for instance, in
Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the...
's short story
William Wilson"William Wilson" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839, with a setting inspired by Poe's formative years outside of London. The tale follows the theme of the doppelgänger and is written in a style based on rationality...
, the protagonist of questionable morality is dogged by his doppelgänger most tenaciously when his morals fail. When doppelgängers are used as harbingers of impending destruction, they are almost always supernaturally based. Some works of fantasy include
shapeshifterShapeShifter is an Application Enhancer plugin for Mac OS X developed by Unsanity that allows the user to make system-wide modifications to the appearance of the operating system's graphical interface by applying GUI skins through “injection” into running code and without modifying system files,...
s, as either talented individuals or as a separate race, who can mimic any person.
In some myths, the doppelgänger is a version of the
AnkouAnkou is a personification of death in Breton mythology.-Background:This character is reported by Anatole Le Braz, writer and legends collector in the 19th century...
, a personification of
deathDeath is the termination of the biological functions that define a living organism. It refers to both a particular event and to the condition that results thereby. The true nature of the latter has for millennia been a central concern of the world's religious traditions and of philosophical...
; in a tradition of the
TalmudThe Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism....
, to meet himself means to meet
GodGod is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism....
.
Doppelgängers are often the evil copies of the player in games. They are usually meant as 'the final test', conquering yourself. Another variant, usually seen in
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically-established or scientifically-postulated laws of nature...
, involves
cloneCloning in biology is the process of producing populations of genetically-identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or organisms...
s, which creates a genetically identical new being without the memories and experiences of the original. Some futuristic variants in fiction duplicate living beings in their entirety, albeit sometimes with modified memories and motives.
Doubles are also seen in fiction involving
time travelTime travel is the concept of moving between different moments in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space, either sending objects backwards in time to a moment before the present, or sending objects forward from the present to the future without the need to...
and
parallel universesParallel universe or alternative reality is a self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a multiverse, although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute physical reality...
, as in the motion picture
Back to the Future Part IIBack to the Future Part II is a 1989 film and a sequel to the 1985 film Back to the Future. Like the previous film, it was directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale...
. In this case, the doppelgänger really "is" the doubled person, but from a different timeline or different version of the universe.
Doppelgängers are also found in Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider Underworld, and Tomb Raider Anniversary. The dark copy mimics Lara's every move in TR1 and Anniversary, and it is only there to keep her from moving on in the game. When Lara shoots, both of them get hurt. In Underworld the doppelgänger looks like Lara but has a mind of its own and can move freely but is stronger faster and more powerful than Lara.
The 2007 epic novel "The Great Adversary" by Hermes Varini covers the doppelgänger theme and elevates it on a heroic and initiatory plane.
See also
- Fetch (folklore)
A fetch is a supernatural double or apparition of a living person in Irish folklore. It is largely akin to the doppelgänger. Francis Grose associated the term with Northern England in his 1787 Provincial Glossary, but otherwise it seems to have been in popular use only in Ireland...
- Alter ego
An alter ego is a second self, a second personality or persona within a person. It was coined in the early nineteenth century when schizophrenia was first described by early psychologists...
- Bilocation
Bilocation, or sometimes multilocation, is a term used to describe the ability/instances in which an individual or object is said to be, or appears to be, located in two distinct places at the same instant in time...
- Body double
A body double is a general term for someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character in any recorded visual medium, whether videotape or film. The term is most commonly used in the context of head-to-toe shots involving nudity. More specific terms are often used in special cases; a...
- Capgras delusion
The Capgras delusion is a disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that a friend, spouse or other close family member, has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor. The Capgras delusion is classed as a delusional misidentification syndrome, a class of delusional beliefs that...
- Evil twin
The evil twin is an antagonist found in many different fictional genres. They are physical copies of protagonists, but with radically inverted moralities. In filmed entertainment, they can have obvious physical differences with the protagonist—such as facial hair, eyepatches, scars or distinctive...
- Ghost
A ghost has been defined as the disembodied spirit or soul of a deceased person, although in popular usage the term refers only to the apparition of such a person...
- Homunculus
A homunculus is, most generally, any representation of a human being. It is often used to illustrate the functioning of a system...
- List of fictional doppelgängers
- Look-alike
A look-alike is a living person who closely resembles another living person. In popular Western culture, a look-alike is a person who bears a close physical resemblance to a celebrity, politician or member of royalty. Many look-alikes earn a living by making guest appearances at public events or...
- Syndrome of subjective doubles
The syndrome of subjective doubles is a rare delusional misidentification syndrome in which a person experiences the delusion that he or she has a double or Doppelgänger with the same appearance, but usually with different character traits and leading a life of its own. Sometimes the patient has...
- Vardøger
The vardøger or vardøgr is a spirit predecessor, from Norwegian folklore. Stories typically include instances that are nearly déjà vu in substance, but in reverse, where a spirit with the subject's footsteps, voice, scent, or appearance and overall demeanor precedes them in a location or activity,...