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.

‘Femi Oyebode has written an incredible book on the doppelgänger phenomenon across history, film, literature, and medicine. As a poet, scholar of medical humanities, clinician scientist, and internationally pre-eminent psychopathologist, I can think of no one better [than Professor Oyebode] to take on this important synthesis and novel argument across multiple academic disciplines. The conclusions of this rich monograph are striking and important: the illusion of the virtual other is a necessary consequence of our existence as experiencing embodied beings tempted by a Cartesian dualism, and the apparent splitting of self and body. I recommend this book not only to clinicians and neuroscientists, but also to cultural historians, literary and film scholars, and philosophers. I have no doubt that the book will impact on my own clinical practice with patients who are frightened by seeing their own doubles.’

Matthew Broome - Chair in Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health, University of Birmingham, UK