Reincarnation 

I indicated above that reincarnation was probably the earliest explanation for déjà vu, at least in western literature. This idea was revived in the nineteenth century, most prominently by the Romantics, so that many poems and books of that period contained musings on "intimations of immortality" and the transmigration of souls. 

Probably the most telling remark made against the reincarnation theory of déjà vu was advanced by one of the earliest scientific writers to deal with the topic In Austria, Dr. Ernst Freiherr von Feuehtersleben published his book entitled Textbook of Medical Psychology in 1845. In a section on disturbances of the memory function, one finds the following opinions (my translation): 

"Here one should include certain fantasies of the memory, e.g., when one has the feeling that a situation in which one finds oneself has already once existed just as it is now. This has been taken by some in poetic error to be a sign of reincarnation (PIatonic reminiscence). If at all, then scarcely were we in a previous life in coattails, lace clothes, kid gloves, sitting with each other in salons at tea and crumpets. We have here, therefore, to do with memory fantasies, a product, even when temporary, of aberrations of remembering." (section 115, part 3, pp. 255 - 256).

I think we need here to begin differentiating between two common forms of déjà experience, namely déjà vécu ("already lived through or experienced") and déjà visité ("already visited") -- or, as TIME magazine termed them, "Been there, done that". The experience just described by the good Austrian psychiatrist would be an example of déjà vécu because it describes a situation that is being "relived".

Reincarnation would seem to better explain incidences of déjà visité, the experience some have of knowing their way around in a locality that they are visiting for the first time. The whole place, or at least a significant part of it, seems familiar to them and they know what is around corners without or before going there. The important questions are: How long have the things around the corner been there? And, are there other people already there? If the person "knows" about a locality that has existed for one or more generations, then reincarnation becomes a viable explanation. If the houses, buildings, and landscape have been there only a relatively short time, then the explanation could lie in a so-called out-of-the-body visit there (cf. Chari, 1960-62, Carrington, The Story of Psychic Science, p. 100, or Shirley, The Problem of Rebirth, pp. 79 - 80), or a clairvoyant vision, or telepathy, given that other people are there (cf. Lalande, 1893). If none of these explanations seem adequate to the facts of the situation, then precognitive knowledge, as in déjà vécu, might be available to the person.

While speaking of déjà visité, there are, of course, two further explanations for it, the simplest and most obvious ones: either the individual really has been to the place, but he isn't able to remember it; or, he has had it once so well described to him that he knows what to expect. One example of the former is found in the paper by Osborne. He told of a clergyman who went with friends to visit Pevensey Castle, ostensibly for the first time. Yet it awakened an uncanny sense of familiarity in him. He found out later from his mother that she had once taken him there when he was 18 months old. 

In Sir Walter Scott's Guy Mannering, one finds the following passage: 

"... why is it that some scenes awaken thoughts which belong as it were to dreams of early and shadowy recollections, such as my old Brahmin Moonshie would have ascribed to a state of previous existence? Is it the visions of our sleep that float confusedly in our memory, and are recalled by the appearance of such real objects as in any respect correspond to the phantoms they presented to our imagination? How often do we find ourselves in society which we have never before met, and yet feel impressed with a mysterious and ill-defined consciousness, that neither the scene, the speakers, nor the subject, are entirely new; nay, feel as if we could anticipate that part of the conversation which has not yet taken place!" (chapter 41, p. 294) 

Here the description is obviously of déjà vu, yet the protagonist has these thoughts upon visiting the ruins of the old manor house of his family from which he had been kidnapped by a band of pirates when he was only five years old. He had been taken to and was raised in the Netherlands. From there, he had gone to India to seek his fortune, becoming a junior officer in the British army with time. Although an instance of déjà visité is described in this quotation and two theories to explain it are presented (reincarnation and one that Freud would have agreed with), the real solution to his quandary is similar to that of Osborne's pastor. 

A further example of the second explanation was provided by Nathaniel Hawthorne in Our Old Home(published in 1863), which is a memoir of a trip to England. In a chapter he called "Near Oxford", he related how he explored the ruins of an old castle at Stanton Harcourt. He was particularly struck by an amazing sense of familiarity he felt within the cavernous kitchen of the place. It was only later that he traced his feeling of recognition to a letter of Alexander Pope's, written to the Duke of Buckingham, where he described the kitchen of the place he was staying (without naming it), and Hawthorne had read this letter during his studies years before. The psychoanalytic aspects of this experience were treated in a paper by Zangwill in 1944.