Autoscopy: the experience of oneself as a double

Autoscopy is thought to be a rare phenomenon in which a person visualizes or experiences a veritable hallucinatory image of his double. It may be more common than has hitherto been thought, however. It has no general pathological significance compared with its counterpart, the Capgras syndrome, where there is the experience of the object as a double, but it can occur in psychotic and borderline states and in afflictions of the central nervous system. Autoscopy has been known since ancient times but came into prominence only in the nineteenth century, both in the romantic literature of the double and in neuropsychiatric research. This paper details its history in literature as well as in psychiatry and neurology and also offers clinical examples from the author's caseload. It is the contention of the author that the phenomenon is far more common as an intrapsychic (nonhallucinatory) experience and that it is especially common in dreams. Autoscopy can ultimately be considered the quintessence of a "Cartesian artifice" in which one mind-body ("I") is caught in the act of regarding its compatriot self as a mind-body with sufficient distance as to register the ultimate meaning of self-recognition. A theory is offered that autoscopy is a special form of depersonalization which may be related to the "split-brain" phenomenon neurophysiologically and which is due to special forms of splitting and projective identification psychically.