"REMEMBER WHEN..." A Consideration of the Concept of Nostalgia

Abstract

Introduction NOSTALGiA oozEs out of our popular culture. Even those of us who have not experienced a particular decade (e.g., fabulous '50s or turbulent '60s), find ourselves looking back to those eras with a fondness; we fool ourselves into thinking events of those times affect our own personal biography in a very direct way (2). Previous eras can indeed affect our personal biography, but in an indirect manner. The public culture contains powerful symbols of past. These symbols become more personal, as we, in some ways, construct our identities from which is available to us culturally. Nostalgia as Emotion The term nostalgia typically conjures up images of a previous time when life was good. Originally, nostalgia referred to a medical condition. Swiss physician Johannes Hofer coined term in late seventeenth century to refer to extreme homesickness Swiss mercenaries experienced. Symptoms of nostalgia, according to Hofer, included not only persistent thoughts about home, but also melancholy, insomnia, anorexia, weakness, anxiety, lack of breath, and palpitations of heart (in McCann, p.5). In 1863, Dr. De Witt C. Peters defined nostalgia this way: [A] species of melancholy, or a mild type of insanity, caused by disappointment and a continuous longing for home (McCann, p. 22) (3). Nostalgia today is most typically regarded as an emotion. So easily and 'naturally' does word come to our tongues nowadays, wrote Davis, that it is much more likely to be classed with such familiar emotions as love, jealousy, and fear than with such 'conditions' as melancholia, obsessive compulsion, or claustrophobia (p.4). The bittersweet nature of nostalgia can make it a difficult emotion. While one's nostalgic memories may connote a pleasant or good time in past, fact individual is removed from ideal situation can trigger sadness and a sense of loss. If nostalgia is a sickness, there is no cure. If it is a problem, there is no solution. Even when one returns to a place he longs for, neither he nor place is same as nostalgic recollection. If one is nostalgic for a particular there is no way of going back. And, even if one could go back in time, life experiences and subsequent changes in self would make nostalgic recollection inapplicable. Mills and Coleman (4) defined nostalgia as the bittersweet recall of emotional past events. Nostalgia is a type of autobiographical memory (p.205). Harper (5) alluded to inherent contradictions nostalgia embodies: Nostalgia combines bitterness and sweetness, lost and found, far and near, new and familiar, absence and presence. The past which is over and gone, from which we have been or are being removed, by some magic becomes present again for a short while. But its realness seems even more familiar, because renewed, than it ever was, more enchanting and more lovely (p. 120). I find it interesting emotions of love and nostalgia have been compared. As McCann (3) noted, Widal (in 1869) pointed out longings in homesickness were very much like those of an unhappy lover. Little by little they take on propositions of a real passion, sometimes causing victim to seek solitude in order to concentrate more fully upon his cherished memories of home (p.43). Furthermore, Harper (5) stated ... love and nostalgia cannot be separated. ... In both love and nostalgia a wave of presence swirls around with a wave of loss. ... We are not nostalgic for mud or evil, for what has hurt us, for suffering. We are not nostalgic for absurd, for tragedy, for comedy, or for whatever is unfriendly. We are homesick only for what makes happy sense to us (p. 105). Nostalgia as Distinct from Other, Related Terms How is nostalgia distinguished from terms reminiscing or sentimentality? Reminiscing refers to recollecting, recalling. …