Illusory Reduplication of One's Own Body: Phenomenology and Classification of Autoscopic Phenomena

1997/02/01 by Peter Brugger, Marianne Regard, Théodor Landis · 13 citations
Medicine · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Cognitive psychology #Cognitive science #Epistemology #Feeling #Hallucinations in medical conditions #Linguistics #Neurology and Historical Studies #Phenomenology (philosophy) #Philosophy #Psychology #Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments #Reduplication #Social psychology

paper · doi:10.1080/135468097396397

openalex publication_date 1997/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/25

Abstract

Autoscopic phenomena involve the illusory reduplication of one's own body. The literature on the topic is widely scattered and suffers from considerable terminological and conceptual inconsistencies. This article proposes a classification scheme based on phenomenological criteria. Along with examples of illustrative cases, we outline the main features of autoscopic hallucinations, heautoscopy proper, the feeling of a presence, the out-of-body experience, and negative and inner forms of autoscopic phenomena. We also discuss the need for a differentiation of autoscopic phenomena from reduplicative paramnesias and the misidentification syndromes. Finally, the concept of a neuromatrix (Melzack, 1990) is proposed as a starting point for the understanding of the neuronal mechanisms underlying autoscopic phenomena.

Citations

• OUT-OF-THE-BODY EXPERIENCES AND THE DENIAL OF DEATH

Cited by

• The body unbound: Vestibular–motor hallucinations and out-of-body experiences
• Stimulating illusory own-body perceptions
• Fractionating the unitary notion of dissociation: disembodied but not embodied dissociative experiences are associated with exocentric perspective-taking
• Reflective mirrors: Perspective-taking in autoscopic phenomena
• The out-of body experience: precipitating factors and neural correlates
• Out of body experiences and their neural basis
• Cognitive correlates of the spontaneous out-of-body experience (OBE) in the psychologically normal population: Evidence for an increased role of temporal-lobe instability, body-distortion processing, and impairments in own-body transformations
• The Experimental Induction of Out-of-Body Experiences
• The Out-of-Body Experience: Disturbed Self-Processing at the Temporo-Parietal Junction
• Voluntary Out-of-Body Experience: An fMRI Study
• Out‐of‐body experience and autoscopy of neurological origin
• Linking Out-of-Body Experience and Self Processing to Mental Own-Body Imagery at the Temporoparietal Junction
• Out-of-body experience [wikipedia]