Doppelgänger
Analysing ‘Doubles' across Antiquity, Fiction, Psychopathology, and Neuroscience

An interdisciplinary book that explores the subjective experience of the self through the notion of the double.

Femi Oyebode (Author)

9781009305761, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 March 2025

185 pages
23 x 15 x 1.2 cm, 0.28 kg

'The book is of high quality, offering the audience an exceptional description of the doppelgänger phenomenon, which spans from antiquity to contemporary times. While discussing fictitious examples of the doppelgänger in novels and other works of fiction, it also considers the doppelgänger as described by modern medical science.' Timothy Legg, Doody's Reviews

The concept of doppelgänger, or 'double' – a conceived exact but sometimes invisible replica of a living person – has fascinated and intrigued people for centuries. This notion has a long history and is a widespread belief among cultural groups around the world. Doppelgängers have influenced literature and cinema, with writers such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Robert Louis Stevenson, and directors like Alfred Hitchcock exploring the phenomenon to great effect. This book brings together the literary and cinematic with empirical scientific literature to raise fundamental questions about the nature of the self and the human mind. It aims to establish the experience of the self and unravel the brain processes that determine bodily representation and the errors that make possible the experience of the doppelgänger phenomenon. This book will appeal to psychiatrists, neurologists, and neuroscientists, as well as interested general readers.

1. Introduction
2. The double in antiquity
3. The double as other in the novel
4. The double as duality in fiction
5. Implicit double in fiction
6. The double in film
7. The double in clinical psychopathology
8. The double in neuroscience
9. The ultimate illusion: understanding embodiment and the self.

Subject Areas: Clinical psychology [MMJ]