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Revision as of 02:40, 28 June 2006 by Medvedenko (talk | contribs) (fixed missing image)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Cryptomnesia, or "concealed recollection," is a very common phenomenon. It is often the means of recalling to mind certain experiences that one otherwise would not remember.
As explained expertly by Carl Jung, in Man and His Symbols, "An author may be writing steadily to a preconceived plan, working out an argument or developing the line of a story, when he suddenly runs off at a tangent. Perhaps a fresh idea has occurred to him, or a different image, or a whole new sub-plot. If you ask him what prompted the digression, he will not be able to tell you. He may not even have noticed the change, though he has now produced material that is entirely fresh and apparently unknown to him before. Yet it can sometimes be shown convincingly that what he has written bears a striking similarity to the work of another author--a work that he believes he has never seen."
Jung goes on to list more specific examples. Friedrich Nietzsche's book Thus Spoke Zarathustra includes an almost word for word account of an incident also included in a book published about 1835, half a century before Nietzsche wrote. This is neither considered to be purposeful plagiarism nor pure coincidence. Nietzsche's sister confirmed that he had indeed read the original account when he was 11-years-old.
Not all examples were of the same nature. For example, cryptomnesia is likely the result of some memories becoming forcibly unconscious ones due to lack of room in the conscious. Therefore it does not always take the shape of plagiarism, as it would in writing, as well as musical compositions, and other art forms, but can also be the basis of philosophy.
"The ability to reach a rich vein of such material and to translate it effectively into philosophy, literature, music or scientific discovery is one of the hallmarks of what is commonly called genius." ---Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols.
German academic Michael Marr's book The Two Lolitas (ISBN 1844670384) describes his recent discovery of a 1916 German short story titled "Lolita" about a middle-aged man traveling abroad who takes a room as a lodger and instantly becomes obsessed with the young pre-teen girl (also named Lolita) who lives in the same house. Marr has speculated that Vladimir Nabokov may have had cryptomnesia (a "hidden memory" of the story that Nabokov was unaware of) while he was composing Lolita during the 1950s. Marr says that until 1937 Nabokov lived in the same section of Berlin as the author, Heinz von Eschwege (nom de plume: Heinz von Lichberg), and was most likely familiar with his work, which was widely available in Germany during Nabokov's time there. , . The Philadelphia Inquirer says that, according to Marr, the word "plagiarism" does not apply and quotes him as saying: "Literature has always been a huge crucible in which familiar themes are continually recast...Nothing of what we admire in Lolita is already to be found in the tale; the former is in no way deducible from the latter."
"We can find clear proof of this fact in the history of science itself. For example, the French mathematician Poincaré and the chemist Kekulé owed important scientific discoveries (as they themselves admit) to sudden pictorial 'revelations' from the unconscious. The so-called 'mystical' experience of the French philosopher Descartes involved a similar sudden revelation in which he saw in a flash the 'order of all sciences.' The British author Robert Louis Stevenson had spent years looking for a story that would fit his 'strong sense of man's double being,' when the plot of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was suddenly revealed to him in a dream." ---Carl Jung Man and His Symbols
The mention of Kekulé is most interesting. While researching benzene, the German chemist dreamed of a snake with its tail in its mouth. Kekulé interpreted the snake as a representation of the closed-carbon ring of benzene, but the symbol of the snake with its tail in its mouth is an ancient one known as the Ouroboros. It can be found in Greek manuscripts from as long ago as the third century BC. This snake can also symbolize reversible chemical reactions.
Legal implications
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Songwriters sometimes subconsciously copy songs that they had heard a decade ago. In a few widely publicized cases, this has resulted in a lawsuit. In Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F.Supp. 177 (SDNY 1976), Ronald Mack and his publisher successfully sued George Harrison for copying the melody of Mack's composition "He's So Fine" into Harrison's "My Sweet Lord". This finding was upheld on appeal in 1983 as ABKCO Music v. Harrisongs Music, 722 F.2d 988, 221 USPQ 490. Michael Bolton#Trivia lost a similar lawsuit to the Isley Brothers' publisher over the song "Love Is a Wonderful Thing" (Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton, 212 F.3d 477 (9th Cir. 2000)).