Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome was first proposed in the 2009 novel Swimming Inside the Sun by David Zweig.

What is Depersonalization

Depersonalization is defined, in part, by the DSM IV [official psychiatric manual] as the feeling of “being detached from one’s mental processes or body; as if an observer.” People often describe the experience as watching oneself as if in a movie, or a dream; viewing one’s life from a distance; feeling as though time is passing in a strange way where one is not in the moment. This sensation is often combined with extreme anxiety, and sometimes the fear that one is going crazy.

Since at least the time of Camus and Sartre, and arguably much earlier in different forms, writers and thinkers have described this unsettling experience of being outside of your own body, of looking in on your life rather than being able to be in your life, of going through the motions as if an automaton.

  

There are many theories as to why this phenomenon occurs. The most prominent one points to childhood trauma, or a present terrifying experience where one disassociates with oneself as a sort of defense mechanism. Depression and anxiety additionally are often listed as potential triggers. There is also some evidence that depersonalization occurs more often in highly individualistic cultures, namely the west. A new theory, however, Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome, first posited in the 2009 novel Swimming Inside the Sun, proposes a different explanation:

Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome

Since the beginning of time, humans have always told stories to each other. Tens of thousands of years ago there was the oral storytelling tradition, and of course images on cave walls told stories or communicated information from one cave-sweller to the next. Throughout history, through the millennia, there have been various advancements - both technological and cultural - in the sophistication of storytelling. At some point theatre was introduced, perhaps most famously with the ancient Greeks. In the middle ages the printing press was developed. And for hundreds of years there have been novels. With few exceptions, these forms of fiction offered intermittent and usually brief escapes from people’s daily lives - perhaps a few hours each week at the theatre, or later, a couple hours a day with a novel. The majority of people’s days were spent hunting, farming, conversing, recreating with others - activities where people were engaged, in the moment.

In the recent past, however, things have changed. Today, we have an extraordinary range, and amount, of fiction that we are exposed to. Oral storytellers, plays, and novels are obviously still with us. But now there are also movies and television, the internet and the infinite range of alternate realities it presents, social media, incredibly immersive video games, and more. This is not to mention the ubiquity of advertisements - on TV, billboards, in magazines, and increasingly, everywhere else. All ads, even if it’s just an image on a page, tell a story. They are fiction. The news is fiction. That doesn’t mean these forms of fiction are not “true” but they still are a representation of reality, an observation and retelling or showing of reality - a mediated event - rather than the unfiltered experiential reality itself. And it is not only that there are so many forms of “fiction” available to us today, but that we spend so much of our lives immersed in them. Arguably, for many of us, we spend more hours of our day in fiction, in this observational reality, than in the moment of reality.

This total immersion in the observation/retelling/showing of reality inevitably alters the way one perceives himself and reality itself. If hours upon hours each day, day after day, are spent as an observer (of TV, movies, innumerable ads), it is inevitable that you will begin to view your own life as Fiction. After so much time spent as an observer, chemical, neural or physical changes may occur in the brain, rendering the mind unable to shift back from this observational state to an experiential state (think of this like your eyes’ initial inability to focus on an object in the distance after you have been reading for a long time). The neural mold that is formed in the mind when one is observing - that initially is malleable as we shift to and from different perspectives - eventually solidifies.

Our modern mediascape forces upon us an ever-increasing degree of self-awareness. Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome is the dissociative endpoint of this larger phenomenon: one is not just figuratively or subconsciously viewing one’s life from afar, but consciously, perceptually so.

Since its introduction in late 2009, Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome has been gaining the attention and support of the academic community. In June 2010, David Zweig presented FDS at the Media Ecology Association’s annual convention, generating intense interest from an international group of communications and media scholars. In August, Zweig will be presenting at the Junge Philosophie Conference in Darmstadt, Germany. And Zweig was invited to present The Observing Self, the broader hypothesis that incorporates FDS, this October at the annual symposium of the Institute of General Semantics, in New York City. FDS, and Swimming Inside the Sun, are slated to be used in curricula at several universities starting fall 2010. Lastly, Zweig has been in contact with experts from a variety of fields, including psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, and media theory with research collaborations planned or underway - stay tuned for updates!