derealization

[dee-ree-uh-luh-zey-shuhn]

noun

Psychiatry.

1. an alteration in perception leading to the feeling that the reality of the world has been changed or lost.

Word History and Origins

Origin of derealization¹

1940–45; de- + realization, originally in the phrase feeling of derealization, as translation of German Entfremdungsgefühl (Freud)

Example Sentences

Since then, the user said he had changed, “mainly from the anxiety and sense of derealization and hopelessness.”

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Derealization and depersonalization refer to feelings that the external world and your own self, respectively, are unreal.

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Lumping the terms together, psychiatrists define depersonalization/derealization disorder as “persistent or recurrent … experiences of unreality, detachment, or being an outside observer with respect to one’s thoughts, feelings, sensations, body, or actions,” according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

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Some people experience derealization out of the blue, others only under stressful circumstances—for example, while taking a test or interviewing for a job.

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Could derealization have inspired all these metaphysical conjectures?

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