Cryptomnesia
- “what is cryptomnesia”
- “did i steal that idea”
- “accidental plagiarism”
- “my sweet lord lawsuit”
:: COMPARE ::
CryptomnesiavsDéjà vu
The short answer
Mirror images. Déjà vu labels the new as familiar; cryptomnesia labels the familiar as new. Both are failures of the source tag rather than of the memory itself — in cryptomnesia the content survives while its origin is lost; in déjà vu the familiarity survives while the content stays out of reach.
Side by side
| Aspect | Cryptomnesia | Déjà vu |
|---|---|---|
| Error | Familiar read as new | New read as familiar |
| You notice | Rarely | Immediately |
| Consequence | Can be legal | None |
| Named | 1900 | 1876 |
Which one you meant
Readers who land here meaning Cryptomnesia rather than Déjà vu are usually searching for phrases like “what is cryptomnesia”, “did i steal that idea”, “accidental plagiarism”.
Déjà Vu
- “what causes deja vu”
- “can deja vu predict the future”
- “is deja vu normal”
- “jamais vu meaning”
Which came first
Cryptomnesia. 1900 — Théodore Flournoy coins the term in Des Indes à la planète Mars, explaining a medium's 'Martian' and past-life material as buried memory resurfacing.
- 1900CryptomnesiaThéodore Flournoy coins the term in Des Indes à la planète Mars, explaining a medium's 'Martian' and past-life material as buried memory resurfacing.
- 2012Déjà VuAnne Cleary's laboratory reports that virtual-reality scenes sharing spatial configuration with an earlier, forgotten scene raise reported familiarity and déjà vu — layout similarity contributes to the feeling rather than reliably causing it.
Read either one in full