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The True Meaning of Nostalgia

By Michael Chabon

I recently had a brief chat with a hundred-year-old Jew. His name is Manuel Bromberg, and he's a resident of Woodstock, New York. Mr. Bromberg had written me a letter, to tell me that he had read and liked my latest book, and in the letter he mentioned that in a few days he would be hitting the century mark, so I thought I'd call him up and wish him a happy hundredth.

An accomplished artist and professor for most of his very long life, Mr. Bromberg painted murals for the W.P.A. and served as an official war artist for the U.S. Army during the Second World War, accompanying the Allied invasion of Europe with paints, pencils, and sketch pad, his path smoothed and ways opened to him by the presence in his pocket of a pass signed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower himself, just like the Eisenhower pass carried by “my grandfather,” the nameless protagonist of my novel . After the war, this working-class boy from Cleveland rode the G.I. Bill to a distinguished career as a serious painter, sculptor, and university professor.

Mr. Bromberg sounded strong and thoughtful and sharp as a tack on the other end of the line, his voice in my ear a vibrant connection not just to the man himself but to the times he had lived through, to the world he was born into, a world in which the greater part of Jewry lived under the Czar, the Kaiser, and the Hapsburg Emperor, in whose army Adolf Hitler was a corporal. As we chatted, I realized that I was talking to a man almost exactly the same age as my grandfather, were he still alive—I mean my real grandfather, Ernest Cohen, some of whose traits, behaviors, and experiences, along with those of his brothers, brothers-in-law, and other men of their generation in my family, of Mr. Bromberg’s generation, helped me to shape the life and adventures of the hero of that book, as my memories of my grandmothers and their sisters and sisters-in-law helped shape my understanding of that book's “my grandmother.”

Then Mr. Bromberg mentioned that he had now moved on to another novel of mine, “ The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay ,” and he wanted to tell me about another connection between his life and the world of my books: when he was in junior high, in Cleveland, Ohio, his chief rival for the title of School's Most Talented Artist was a four-eyed, acne-faced wunderkind named Joe Shuster. One day in the mid-nineteen-thirties, in the school locker room, Mr. Bromberg told me, Joe Shuster came to him looking for his opinion on some new drawings: pencil sketches of a stylized cartoon strongman cavorting in a pair of circus tights, with a big letter-S insignia on his chest. To the young Mr. Bromberg, they seemed to be nothing more than competent figure drawings, but Shuster seemed to be very excited about this “Superman” character that he and a friend had come up with. “I have to be honest with you, Michael,” Mr. Bromberg told me, in a confidential tone. “I was not impressed.”

After we talked, I found myself reflecting on the way that, with his Eisenhower pass and his connection to the golden age of comic books, with his creative aspirations rooted equally in hard work and the highbrow, in blue collar and the avant-garde, Mr. Bromberg had been able to find so much of himself in my writing, as so many Mr. Brombergs, in various guises, can be found in the pages of my books. I think there are a few reasons that the lives of that generation of American Jews have formed my fiction. The first is that I have always been—to a fault, it has at times seemed—a good boy. At family gatherings, at weddings and bar mitzvahs, from the time I was small, among all my siblings and cousins, I always felt a sense of dutifulness about hanging out with the old people, enduring their interrogations, remedying their ignorance of baffling modern phenomena, such as Wacky Packages or David Bowie, and, above all, listening to their reminiscences. As the extent of my sense of obligation about serving this function became apparent, I was routinely left behind with the Aunt Ruths and the Uncle Jacks and the Cousin Tobys, not just by my peers and coevals but by  our parents _,_ too. Even to this day, at the weddings and bar mitzvahs of other families, you will often find me sitting alone at a table with an Uncle Jack completely unrelated to me, patiently listening to the story of the plastic-folding-rain-bonnet business he started in Rochester in 1948 with a three-hundred-dollar loan from somebody else's Aunt Ruth, a story that all of his own relatives tired of hearing years ago, if they ever paid attention at all.

The dutifulness of a good boy is not, of course, the whole explanation. I'm not that good. The thing is, I have always wanted to hear the stories, the memories, the remembrances of vanished Brooklyn, or vanished South Philly, or even, dim and sepia-toned and far away, vanished Elizavetgrad, vanished Vilna. I have always wanted to hear the stories of lost wonders, of how noon was turned dark as night by vast flocks of the now-extinct passenger pigeon, of Ebbets Field and five-cent all-day Saturday matinées and Horn & Hardart automats, and I have always been drawn to those rare surviving things—a gaudy Garcia y Vega cigar box, a lady swimming in a rubber bathing cap covered in big rubber flowers, Mr. Bromberg—that speak, mutely or eloquently, of a time and a place and a generation that will soon be gone from the face of the earth.

My work has at times been criticized for being overly nostalgic, or too much about nostalgia. That is partly my fault, because I actually have written a lot about the theme of nostalgia; and partly the fault of political and economic systems that abuse nostalgia to foment violence and to move units. But it is not nostalgia’s fault, if fault is to be found. Nostalgia is a valid, honorable, ancient human emotion, so nuanced that its sub-variants have names in other languages—German's sehnsucht , Portuguese's saudade —that are generally held to be untranslatable. The nostalgia that arouses such scorn and contempt in American culture—predicated on some imagined greatness of the past or inability to accept the present—is the one that interests me least. The nostalgia that I write about, that I study, that I feel, is the ache that arises from the consciousness of lost connection.

More than ten years ago now, my cousin Susan, a daughter of my mother's Uncle Stanley, forwarded me some reminiscences of Stanley’s childhood that he had set down just as his health was failing. Besides my grandfather, Uncle Stan was always my favorite among the male relatives of that generation: witty, charming, and refined, with a deceptively sweet and gentle way of being sardonic and even, on occasion, sharp-tongued. He was a professor, a scholar of medieval German who for many years was also the dean of humanities at the University of Texas. A Guggenheim fellow and Fulbright scholar, Stan was fluent in a number of languages, not least among them Yiddish; during his tenure as dean he created a Yiddish-studies program at U.T. He had been an intelligence officer in Italy during the Second World War, and was decorated for his service during the fierce battle of Monte Cassino.

His reminiscences—or fragmentary memoir, as I came to think of it—ignored all that. It was a delightful document, all too brief, a shaggy and rambling but vivid account of his early life as the son of typical Jewish-immigrant parents, in Philadelphia and Richmond. It featured memories of the godlike lifeguards and the Million-Dollar Pier, at Atlantic City; of stealing turnips and playing Civil War, in Richmond, with boys who were the grandsons of Confederate soldiers; of neighbors who brewed their own beer during Prohibition; of his father’s numerous unlucky business ventures; of his mother hauling wet laundry up from the basement to hang it out on the line, where, in the wintertime, it froze solid.

But what stood out for me most vividly in Uncle Stanley's memories was the omnipresence and the warmth of his memories of his many aunts, uncles, and cousins, who seemed to take up as much room in his little memoir as his siblings and parents. In the geographically and emotionally close world they lived in, Stan’s extended family of parents’ siblings, their spouses and their siblings and their spouses, and, apparently, huge numbers of first, second, third, and more distant cousins, was just that—an all but seamless extension of the family he lived in. That’s how it was in those days. Somebody came to Philadelphia from Russia, and then his brother came, and then another brother, and pretty soon there were fifty people living in the same couple of neighborhoods in Philly, a kind of community within the community, connected not merely by blood or ties of affection but also by the everyday commitments, debts, responsibilities, disputes, tensions, and small pleasures that make up the daily life of a family.

When I was growing up, it wasn’t like that anymore. My parents moved seven times before I was seven years old, back and forth across the country. I had a lot of second cousins and great-aunts and great-uncles, and I used to see them—and be abandoned to their company—at weddings, bar mitzvahs, et cetera. Listening to those stories, I always felt a kind of a lack, a wistfulness, a sense of having missed something. Reading Stan’s memoir, looping and wandering as his thoughts were as he lay contending with his illness, seemed to connect me, briefly but powerfully, to all that vanished web of connections.

Nostalgia, to me, is not the emotion that follows a longing for something you lost, or for something you never had to begin with, or that never really existed at all. It's not even, not really, the feeling that arises when you realize that you missed out on a chance to see something, to know someone, to be a part of some adventure or enterprise or milieu that will never come again. Nostalgia, most truly and most meaningfully, is the emotional experience—always momentary, always fragile—of having what you lost or never had, of seeing what you missed seeing, of meeting the people you missed knowing, of sipping coffee in the storied cafés that are now hot-yoga studios. It’s the feeling that overcomes you when some minor vanished beauty of the world is momentarily restored, whether summoned by art or by the accidental enchantment of a painted advertisement for Sen-Sen, say, or Bromo-Seltzer, hidden for decades, then suddenly revealed on a brick wall when a neighboring building is torn down. In that moment, you are connected; you have placed a phone call directly into the past and heard an answering voice.

“Thank you, Mr. Bromberg,” I said, just before I hung up, not sure what I was thanking him for, exactly, but overcome with gratitude all the same, both of us aware, I suppose, as we made tentative plans to meet sometime soon, or at least to talk again, that the next time I called there might be no one on the other end of the line.

Adapted from the author’s remarks to the Jewish Book Council, upon receiving the organization’s Modern Literary Achievement award, on March 7th.

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Definition of Nostalgia

The term nostalgia , or the feeling of homesickness, has been derived from a Homeric term, “nostos,” which means homecoming. Homer used this term in his epic Odyssey , to show how homesick Odysseus grew when he freed himself from the war. However, the modern derivative of this term is medical research, as a student by the name of Johannes Hofer coined this term during his study of homesickness of mercenaries, including the associated anxiety and mental pain he observed among them.

However, in literature, nostalgia is employed to discuss a general interest in the past, or the personalities of the past, and subsequent feelings of pleasure or pain. The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines nostalgia as, “pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the past and wishing that you could experience it again.” Therefore, nostalgia is not only sadness or sickness, but also the pleasure of remembering, or taking interest in, the past. That is why the Romantic Movement in English literature has a special association with nostalgia, focusing on the pleasure and pain of remembering the past.

Examples of Nostalgia in Literature

Example #1: patriot into traitor , lines 1-5 (by robert browning).

“It was roses, roses, all the way, With myrtle mixed in my path like mad. The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, A year ago on this very day!”

These are the opening lines from Robert Browning ’s famous poem “Patriot into Traitor,” which shows how nostalgic the king has become about his past, when he is given a heroic welcome. The people gather everywhere to have his glance. However, after a time span of a year, everything changes. The people, who were happy to welcome him at that time, are now eager to see him going to gallows. That is why he becomes nostalgic about the past.

Example #2: Little Dorrit (By Charles Dickens)

“For I must now confess to you that I suffer from home-sickness — that I long so ardently and earnestly for home, as sometimes, when no one sees me, to pine for it. … So dearly do I love the scene of my poverty and your kindness . O so dearly, O so dearly!”

These lines are from Charles Dickens ’ novel , Little Dorrit. This is Amy Dorrit’s dialogue , who cannot forget her past. On the other hand, all her family members pretend to have forgotten their past. Amy Dorrit has been so involved with her past that she feels pangs of those happy times, and is compelled to think about them. This is a good example of nostalgia by Charles Dickens.

Example #3: The Daffodils , lines 18-24 (By William Wordsworth)

“For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood , They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.”

This stanza is a good example of Romantic nostalgic poetry. This is the last stanza of The Daffodils , by William Wordsworth. The poet, having seen beautiful daffodils somewhere, now often sits alone on his couch, recalling the same scene, which brings him pleasure. This is an apt example of pleasure in nostalgia, because the poet experienced tranquility and peace of mind in the company of the flowers , and he still feels the same afterward, when he is alone at home.

Function of Nostalgia

Despite changes in its meaning over time, nostalgia has not lost its significance in literature. It is used in poems, novels, and plays to evoke feelings of sadness or pleasure a character experiences when recalling his past. It could be the memory of a past event, a victory, a love, or a relationship. It is usually employed to evoke the same feelings among the readers, so that they also could feel the tinge of pain, or a bit of love for their near or dear ones. It could be used to evoke the feelings of pleasure the readers might feel for some past happenings. Nostalgia has more than one function to perform, such as turning a mood from sadness to pleasure, increasing positive self-respect, and doing away with prejudice about the past events.

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• Literary Terms
• When & How to Write Nostalgia
• Definition & Examples

How to Write Nostalgia

• The best nostalgic writing is always based on real memories . It’s much easier to write as you get older and the world changes more and more around you, while your memories of the past get more and more solidified from playing them over and over in your head.
• The memories should be shared with your audience. Bring out details from the past that other people will remember as well. It works best if these memories are things that people haven’t thought about for a long time, so that their reaction is a sudden “Oh yeeeeeah!” moment.
• They should come from a specific time . Nostalgia shouldn’t just be about “the past,” but should be about a specific time period, for example “The 60s” or “When I Was in 3rd Grade.” Once you choose a specific time, dig into it for as many details as you can and pick out the ones that you think are especially unique and memorable.
• The memories need to be presented in a positive light , shorn of all negativity, discomfort, anxiety, etc. Nostalgia looks back on the past as a pure, perfect time of life.

When to Use Nostalgia

Nostalgia can be a great inspiration for short stories and poems. If there’s a time in your life that you remember fondly, put those memories on paper and shape them into a story or poem. In formal essays , there’s really not much point in using nostalgia. It may come up along the way, for example if you’re writing a paper about the Beatles and your reader looks back fondly on their memories of the 1960s. However, your purpose in an essay is to make an argument, not to evoke nostalgia. In fact, nostalgia can often be a bad thing in history papers, because it erases certain aspects of the truth — those that are negative or painful.

List of Terms

• Alliteration
• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Anthropomorphism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Characterization
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Onomatopoeia
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Personification
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
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Definition of nostalgia

Examples of nostalgia in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'nostalgia.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

borrowed from New Latin, from Greek nóstos "return, homecoming" (nominal derivative, with o-ablaut and the suffix -to-, from the base of néomai, neîsthai "to come/go [home, back], return") + -o- -o- + -algia -algia ; néomai going back to the Indo-European verbal base *nes- "escape danger, return safely," whence also Germanic *nesan- "to be saved, return safely" (whence Old English nesan, genesan "to be saved, survive" [strong verb class V], Old Saxon ginesan "to be saved, convalesce," Old High German, "to recover, be saved," Gothic ganisan "to be saved"), Sanskrit násate "approaches, resorts to someone, joins"; from a causative stem *nos-éi̯e- Germanic *nazjan-, whence Old English nerian "to save, preserve," Old Frisian nera "to save, nourish, Old Saxon nerian "to rescue, redeem, nourish," Old High German nerien, nerren "to nourish, support, save, heal," Gothic nasjan "to save, heal"; and from lengthened grade *nōzjan- Old Icelandic nœra "to refresh, nourish"

Note: The Latin word nostalgia was coined by the physician Johannes Hofer (1669-1752), a native of Mühlhausen/Mulhouse in Alsace, in his doctoral thesis Dissertatio medica de ΝΟΣΤΑΛΓΙΑ, oder Heimwehe (Basel, 1688), as a calque of the German word Heimweh. — Also assigned to the Indo-European verbal base *nes- by some are Tocharian A nasam, B nesau "(I) am," though Douglas Adams ( A Dictionary of Tocharian B, Revised and Enlarged, Rodopi, 2013, s.v.) proposes a more attractive solution.

1756, in the meaning defined at sense 2

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no sooner than

Cite this Entry

“Nostalgia.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nostalgia. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of nostalgia, medical definition, medical definition of nostalgia, more from merriam-webster on nostalgia.

Nglish: Translation of nostalgia for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of nostalgia for Arabic Speakers

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The Blue Boat (1892) by Winslow Homer. Courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nostalgia reimagined

Neuroscience is finding what propaganda has long known: nostalgia doesn’t need real memories – an imagined past works too.

by Felipe De Brigard   + BIO

He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past. But when he stood at the railing of the ship and saw the white promontory of the colonial district again, the motionless buzzards on the roofs, the washing of the poor hung out to dry on the balconies, only then did he understand to what extent he had been an easy victim to the charitable deceptions of nostalgia. – From Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) by Gabriel García Márquez

The other day I caught myself reminiscing about high school with a kind of sadness and longing that can only be described as nostalgia. I felt imbued with a sense of wanting to go back in time and re-experience my classroom, the gym, the long hallways. Such bouts of nostalgia are all too common, but this case was striking because there is something I know for sure: I hated high school. I used to have nightmares, right before graduation, about having to redo it all, and would wake up in sweat and agony. I would never, ever like to go back to high school. So why did I feel nostalgia about a period I wouldn’t like to relive? The answer, as it turns out, requires we rethink our traditional idea of nostalgia.

Coined by the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer in 1688, ‘nostalgia’ referred to a medical condition – homesickness – characterised by an incapacitating longing for one’s motherland. Hofer favoured the term because it combined two essential features of the illness: the desire to return home ( nostos ) and the pain ( algos ) of being unable to do so. Nostalgia’s symptomatology was imprecise – it included rumination, melancholia, insomnia, anxiety and lack of appetite – and was thought to affect primarily soldiers and sailors. Physicians also disagreed about its cause. Hofer thought that nostalgia was caused by nerve vibrations where traces of ideas of the motherland ‘still cling’, whereas others, noticing that it was found predominantly among Swiss soldiers fighting at lower altitudes, proposed instead that nostalgia was caused by changes in atmospheric pressure, or eardrum damage from the clanging of Swiss cowbells. Once nostalgia was identified among soldiers from various nationalities, the idea that it was geographically specific was abandoned.

By the early 20th century, nostalgia was considered a psychiatric rather than neurological illness – a variant of melancholia. Within the psychoanalytic tradition, the object of nostalgia – ie, what the nostalgic state is about – was dissociated from its cause. Nostalgia can manifest as a desire to return home, but – according to psychoanalysts – it is actually caused by the traumatic experience of being removed from one’s mother at birth. This account began to be questioned in the 1940s, with nostalgia once again linked to homesickness. ‘Home’ was now interpreted more broadly to include not only concrete places, such as a childhood town, but also abstract ones, such as past experiences or bygone moments. While disagreements lingered, by the second part of the 20th century, nostalgia began to be characterised as involving three components. The first was cognitive : nostalgia involves the retrieval of autobiographical memories. The second, affective : nostalgia is considered a debilitating, negatively valenced emotion. And third, conative : nostalgia comprises a desire to return to one’s homeland. As I’ll argue, however, this tripartite characterisation of nostalgia is likely wrong.

First, two clarifications: nostalgia is neither pathological nor beneficial. I’ve always found it surprising when scholars fail to note the patent contradiction in illustrating nostalgia’s debilitating nature with the example of Ulysses in the Odyssey . Homer tells us that thinking of home was painful and brought tears to Ulysses’ eyes, yet the thought of going back to Ithaca wasn’t incapacitating. Instead, it was motivating. That it took Ulysses 10 years to get back home had more to do with Circe, Calypso and Poseidon than with the debilitating nature of nostalgia. The other clarification: philosophers distinguish the object and the content of a mental state. The object is what the mental state is about; it needn’t exist – I can think of Superman, for instance. The content is the way in which the object is thought of. The same object can be thought of in different ways – Lois Lane can think of Kal-El as either Superman or Clark Kent – and thus bring about different, even contradictory, thoughts about the same object (here, I assume that contents are instantiated in neural representations suitably related to their objects).

W ith these clarifications in mind, let’s re-evaluate the tripartite view of nostalgia, beginning with its cognitive component. According to this view, nostalgia involves autobiographical memories of one’s homeland, suggesting that the object of one’s nostalgic states must be a place. However, research shows that by ‘homeland’ people often mean something else: childhood experiences, long-gone friends, foods, costumes, etc. Indeed, the multifarious nature of nostalgia’s objects was first systematically studied in 1995 by the American psychologist Krystine Batcho. She documented 648 participants’ nostalgic events, and found that, while they often reported feeling nostalgic about places, they also felt so about nonspatial items: loved ones, the feeling of ‘not having to worry’, holidays, or simply ‘the way people were’. Similarly, in 2006, the psychologist Tim Wildschut and his colleagues at the University of Southampton coded the content of 42 autobiographical narratives from Nostalgia magazine , as well as dozens of narratives from undergraduates, and found that a large proportion were about things other than locations. This variability holds across cultures too, as evidenced by the work of Erica Hepper and her international team who in 2014 studied 1,704 students from 18 countries and found that they frequently experienced nostalgia about things other than past events or places, including social relationships, memorabilia or childhood. These results suggest that mental states associated with nostalgia needn’t be memories of specific locations nor of specific autobiographical events.

Why, despite these results, do researchers insist that nostalgia is associated with a specific autobiographical memory? The reason, I believe, has more to do with experimental methodology than with psychological reality. Nostalgia researchers usually distinguish between ‘personal’ and ‘historical’ nostalgia; the former tends to be studied by social psychologists, while the latter tends to be studied in marketing. As a result, most experimental paradigms in the social psychology of nostalgia ask participants to think of specific memories that make them feel nostalgic. In contrast, marketing researchers tend to use historically dated external cues, such as ‘think of TV shows in the 1980s’, to elicit feelings of nostalgia – which are then associated with some sort of consumer behaviour (eg, TV ratings). Unsurprisingly, there is much psychological overlap between the two experimental strategies. Some marketing studies report that, when cued with products, participants can recall precise autobiographical memories, while other times they bring to mind less spatiotemporally precise events (eg, ‘my time in grade school’).

More interesting still is that nostalgia can bring to mind time-periods we didn’t directly experience. In the film Midnight in Paris (2011), Gil is overwhelmed by nostalgic thoughts about 1920s Paris – which he, a modern-day screenwriter, hasn’t experienced – yet his feelings are nothing short of nostalgic. Indeed, feeling nostalgic for a time one didn’t actually live through appears to be a common phenomenon if all the chatrooms, Facebook pages and websites dedicated to it are anything to go by. In fact, a new word has been coined to capture this precise variant of nostalgia – anemoia , defined by the Urban Dictionary and the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows as ‘nostalgia for a time you’ve never known’.

How can we make sense of the fact that people feel nostalgia not only for past experiences but also for generic time periods? My suggestion, inspired by recent evidence from cognitive psychology and neuroscience, is that the variety of nostalgia’s objects is explained by the fact that its cognitive component is not an autobiographical memory, but a mental simulation – an imagination, if you will – of which episodic recollections are a sub-class. To support this claim, I need first to discuss some developments in the science of memory and imagination.

Emotion researchers think of nostalgia as ‘bittersweet’ – as involving both positive and negative valences

Although memory and imagination are usually thought of as different, a number of critical findings in the past three decades have challenged this view. In 1985, the psychologist Endel Tulving in Toronto observed that his amnesic patient ‘N N’ not only had difficulty remembering his past: he also had trouble imagining possible future events. This led Tulving to suggest that remembering the past and imagining the future were two processes of a single system for mental time-travel. Further support for this hypothesis came in the early 2000s, as a number of scientific studies confirmed that both remembering the past and imagining the future engage the brain’s so-called ‘default network’. But in the past decade, it has become clear that the brain’s default network supports mental simulations of other hypothetical events too, such as episodes that could have occurred in one’s past but didn’t, atemporal routine activities (eg, brushing teeth), mind-wandering, spatial navigation, imagining other people’s thoughts (mentalising) and narrative comprehension, among others. As a result, researchers now think that what unifies this common neural network isn’t just mental time-travel, but rather a more general kind of psychological process characterised by being self-relevant, socially significant and episodically, dynamically imaginative. My suggestion is that the kinds of nonautobiographical cognitive contents associated with nostalgic states are instances of this broader category of imaginations.

If this suggestion is on the right track, then we can readily explain why people tend to feel nostalgia for possible objects other than specific past autobiographical events. The reason, I surmise, is because the cognitive contents associated with their nostalgic states are the kinds of mental simulations supported by the default network – which include, but are not limited to, autobiographical memories. Consequently, nostalgia can be associated with a possible past one didn’t experience, a concurrent nonactualised present, or even idealised pasts one couldn’t have lived but nevertheless can easily imagine by piecing together memorial information to form detailed episodic mental simulations (as in Midnight in Paris ). Finally, broadening up the cognitive contents of nostalgia from autobiographical memories to the larger class of dynamic episodic simulations just discussed also helps to explain why nostalgia is normally associated with facts and experiences that are personally meaningful and socially relevant.

Emotions have different valence: some are positive, some negative, and some both. Negatively valenced emotions include fear and sadness, while positively valanced emotions include happiness and joy. According to the traditional view, nostalgia is seen as a negative emotion: early medical reports described homesick patients as sad, melancholic and lethargic. The psychoanalytic tradition continued this view, and characterised nostalgia as involving sadness and pain. Indeed, it catalogued it as a particularly sad version of melancholia, tantamount to today’s depression.

Dissident voices suggested instead that there was something enjoyable about nostalgia. In 1872, for instance, Charles Darwin mentions that some feelings are difficult to analyse because they involve both pain and joy, and includes as an example Ulysses’ nostalgic recollection of his homeland. Almost 100 years later, and breaking with the psychoanalytic tradition, the American psychiatrist Jack Kleiner reported the case of a profoundly nostalgic patient that nonetheless exhibited joy, leading Kleiner to propose a difference between homesickness and nostalgia, on the grounds that the latter involves both sadness and joy. This distinction was later reformulated as depressive versus non-depressive nostalgia, with some even suggesting that the abnormal case of nostalgia is the depressive one, given that its pleasurable aspect is missing. Since then, emotion researchers have started to think of nostalgia as ‘bittersweet’ – as involving both positive and negative valences.

But what about all these negatively valenced symptoms – the sadness, the depression – associated with nostalgia? Aren’t they also effects of nostalgia? My sense is that physicians of old got the order of causation backwards: nostalgia doesn’t cause negative affect but, rather, is caused by negative affect. Evidence for this claim comes from a number of recent studies showing that people are more likely to feel nostalgia when they are experiencing negative affect. Specifically, it has been documented that certain negative experiences tend to trigger nostalgia, including loneliness, loss of social connections, sense of meaninglessness, boredom, even cold temperatures . This doesn’t mean that nostalgia is triggered only by negative experiences, but it does suggest that the negative affect can often be a cause, rather than an effect, of nostalgia.

The question now is, how can we make sense of nostalgia as involving both negative and positive valences at once? This becomes less surprising when we understand nostalgia as imagination. Often, when we entertain certain mental simulations, we go back and forth between the current act of simulating and the content that’s simulated. Both the act of simulating and the simulated content elicit emotions, and they needn’t be the same. Consider another paradigmatic dynamic mental simulation: upward counterfactual thoughts, or mental simulations about ways in which bad outcomes could have been better (‘If only I had arrived earlier, I would have got tickets for the show’). Typically, these kinds of counterfactual thoughts elicit feelings of regret.

However, as the American psychologists Keith Markman and Matthew McMullen demonstrated in 2003, if one mentally switches attention from the emotion felt while simulating the counterfactual to the emotion one feels when attending only to the simulated content, regret can turn into contentment. Conversely, one can imagine an alternative bad outcome to what in reality was a positive one (‘Had I missed that penalty kick, we would have lost the game’). Normally, these ‘downward counterfactuals’ elicit feelings of relief, a paradigmatically positive emotion. But when attention is focused only on the content of the counterfactual thought, not to the situation one’s in when simulating, negative emotions can ensue. Consequently, the discrepancy between the emotion felt when attending to the act of simulating versus the content of the simulation can account for the perceived ‘bittersweetness’ of nostalgia.

T he last component of the traditional view is the conative component, as nostalgia is thought to involve a desire to go back to one’s home. Despite its centrality, this component is seldom studied. To analyse it, philosophy can help once again. When thinking about desires, philosophers distinguish between the object and the conditions of satisfaction of a desire: the state of affairs that, were it to obtain, would fulfil the desire. Often, they are the same; if the object of my desire is a cookie, then getting a cookie fulfils my desire. But things get tricky with nostalgia. On the traditional view, the object of nostalgia is a location – say, one’s homeland – so the desire would be satisfied by going back. Since one cannot go back – think Ulysses – then the desire is unfulfilled, and negative affect ensues.

However, people often feel nostalgic for their homeland and, upon return, find their longing unsatisfied. Consider this essay’s epigraph. It describes García Márquez’s character Juvenal Urbino, a young doctor studying in Paris, as he reminisces about the odours, sounds and open terraces of his Caribbean homeland, wishing every second to go back. But, upon returning, he feels disappointed – tricked – by the rosy colours of an idealised nostalgic past. This difficulty is nostalgia’s incarnation of a well-known Platonic paradox described in the Gorgias : a person can desire something and then, when she gets it, the desire isn’t satisfied.

A possible solution is to think of the object of nostalgia’s desire as a place-in-time. This strategy allows for two possible readings. On one reading, what the individual desires is for her current self to travel back in time to where things were better than they currently are. This is painful because time-travel is impossible. On another reading, what the subject desires is for the past situation to be brought to the present; that is, she doesn’t wish to travel back in time to a past situation, but rather that the past situation could somehow replace the current one. Here, the object that could satisfy the nostalgic desire would be found not in the past but in the present, and what causes the pain is a different kind of impossibility: that of recreating the past in the present.

A more tractable version of this second reading was championed by Charles Zwingmann’s medical analysis of nostalgia in 1960, according to which what the subject wants is for gratifying features from past experiences to be reinstated in the present, presumably because the current situation lacks them. Although a person might feel nostalgia about a childhood friendship, her longing would actually be satisfied not by travelling back in time but by improving her current relationships. There are two advantages to this approach. First, it helps to understand nostalgia’s particular instantiation of Gorgias ’ paradox: the nostalgic individual wrongly attributes the desirable features of the object to an unrecoverable event, when in reality those features can be dissociated from it and reattached to a current condition. Second, this approach can help to understand recent findings suggesting that nostalgia can be motivational, and can increase optimism, creativity and pro-social behaviours.

Young people avidly support nostalgic policies that would return their nations to a past they never experienced

What drives this motivational spirit? Once again, the answer to this question comes from considering nostalgia as imagination. Neuroscience tells us that, when we imagine, we redeploy much of the same neural mechanisms that we would have employed had we actually engaged in the simulated action. When we imagine biking, we engage much of the same brain regions we’d have engaged had we actually been biking. As a result, some contemporary views – such as that of the psychologists Heather Kappes in London and Carey Morewedge in Boston – suggest that engaging in certain kinds of simulations is a way of economically substituting an experience for a cognitively close replacement – an ersatz experience, as it were.

Now recall my earlier discussion of the discrepancy in the valence felt when attention is directed to the simulated content versus the act of simulating. My proposal here is that what underlies the motivational aspect of nostalgia comes from a pleasurable reward signal that the subject momentarily experiences when attention is allocated to the simulated content. As it turns out, this is exactly what the neuroscientist Kentaro Oba and colleagues in Tokyo found in a 2016 study , where brain activity in regions associated with reward-seeking and motivation was higher during nostalgic recollection. Entertaining the kinds of mental simulations that elicit the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia generates a reward signal that seems to motivate individuals to turn their ersatz experience into a real one, in an attempt to replace the (actual) negative emotion felt when simulating with the (imagined) positive emotion of the simulated content.

Nostalgia, then, is a complex mental state with three components: a cognitive, an affective, and a conative component. This is generally recognised. However, my characterisation differs from the traditional one in putting imagination at its heart. First, I suggest that the cognitive component needn’t be a memory but a kind of imagination, of which episodic autobiographical memories are a case. Second, nostalgia is affectively mixed-valanced, which results from the juxtaposition of the affect generated by the act of simulating – which is typically negative – with the affect elicited by the simulated content, which is typically positive. Finally, the conative component isn’t a desire to go back to the past but, rather, a motivation to reinstate in the present the properties of the simulated content that, when attended to, make us feel good.

I will conclude with a brief speculation on a topic of contemporary importance. In the past few years, we’ve seen a resurgence of nationalistic political movements that have gained traction by way of promoting a return to the ‘good old days’: ‘Make America Great Again’ in the US, or ‘We Want Our Country Back’ in the UK. These politics of nostalgia promote the implementation of policies that, supposedly, would return nations to times in which people were better off. Unsurprisingly, such politics are usually heralded by conservative groups who, in the past, tended to be better off than they currently are – independently of the particular politics of the time. In a 2016 study conducted by the Polish social psychologists Monika Prusik and Maria Lewicka, a large sample of Poles were asked nostalgia-related questions about how things were prior to the fall of communism 25 years earlier. The results revealed that people felt much more nostalgic and had more positive feelings about the communist government if they were better off then than now, if they were older, and if they were currently unhappy. Doubtlessly, older and conservative-leaning folk who perceive their past – whether accurately or not – as better than their present account for a significant portion of the electorate supporting nationalistic movements. But we’d be misled to think of them as the primary engine, let alone the majority. For the Polish results show something very different: a large number of younger individuals avidly supporting nostalgic policies that would return their nations to a past they never experienced.

The psychological underpinnings of this phenomenon would be hard to explain under the traditional view of nostalgia. If people have not experienced a past, how can they feel nostalgic about it? However, under the view proposed here, an explanation is readily available. For the politics of nostalgia doesn’t capitalise on people’s memories of particular past events they might have experienced. Instead, it makes use of propaganda about the way things were, in order to provide people with the right episodic materials to conjure up imaginations of possible scenarios that most likely never happened. These very same propagandistic strategies help to convince people that their current situation is worse than it actually is, so that when the simulated content – which, when attended, brings about positive emotions – is juxtaposed to negatively valenced thoughts about their present status, a motivation to eliminate this emotional mismatch ensues, and with it an inclination to political action. The politics of nostalgia has less to do with memories about a rosy past, and more with propaganda and misinformation. This suggests, paradoxically, that the best way to counteract it might be to improve our knowledge of the past. Nostalgia can be a powerful political motivator, for better or for worse. Improving the accuracy of our memory for the past could indeed be the best strategy to curb the uncharitable deceptions of the politics of nostalgia.

A longer version of this article, titled ‘Nostalgia and Mental Simulation’, was published in The Moral Psychology of Sadness (2018), edited by Anna Gotlib.

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Nostalgia as a Psychological Resource for a Meaningful Life

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Nostalgia is a mostly positive emotional experience that involves reminiscing about personally significant events and/or social relationships. A growing literature indicates that nostalgic reflection generally promotes well-being. This chapter focuses on how nostalgia promotes well-being by functioning as a resource for meaning in life. First, we discuss research demonstrating that nostalgic memories are meaningful memories and that reflecting on nostalgic memories bolsters a sense of meaning in life. Moreover, we review evidence that nostalgia is a psychological resource that people turn to when experiencing meaning deficits. Further, nostalgia functions to buffer existential threats and mitigate the negative consequences of lack of meaning. Finally, we discuss research suggesting that nostalgia encourages the pursuit of the good life by energizing meaning-making efforts of authenticity, self-growth, and interpersonal connection.

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Abeyta, A.A., Routledge, C. (2017). Nostalgia as a Psychological Resource for a Meaningful Life. In: Robinson, M., Eid, M. (eds) The Happy Mind: Cognitive Contributions to Well-Being. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58763-9_23

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Nostalgia is a longing and affection for the past. This can encompass positive emotions such as happiness as well as other emotions and recollections, such as tenderness and longing. We have the feeling of nostalgia when we yearn for simpler times, for example, when we were children.

Johannes Hofer, a Swiss physician, coined the term in 1688; at that time, longing for the past and homeland was deemed an illness. Thinking about yesteryear can be filled with regret and bittersweet remembrances, and for people who are prone to rumination and depression , nostalgia can sometimes foster a negative state of mind. Nostalgia, however, is now generally regarded in a positive light. It’s self-reflection that connects us to fond memories and and can help build a coherent sense of identity .

• The Emotional Comfort of Nostalgia
• How Nostalgia Helps Shape Us

Through nostalgia, we can escape to a time when life felt more secure, or a time of positive experiences or events. When we feel uncertain or stressed , thinking back nostalgically can give us emotional comfort. Film, TV, and advertising campaigns deploy the use of nostalgia to great effect.

People engaging in nostalgia do focus more on selective memories, recalling positive past events and experiences rather than negative and difficult ones. This perspective of time lets us downplay or even forget the hard times we have endured.

We often rely on our autobiographical memories , which can be emotionally charged depending on the events that happened. We may also reform our memories into an idealized version of the event; in effect, we focus on the positives and minimize the negatives.

Nostalgia can help a person regulate their emotions. The discomfort of stress, anxiety , or loneliness can be alleviated when we think about the past with positivity and affection; the feeling of nostalgia can help us feel comfort and stability.

In the face of an obstacle or challenging moment, we can dip into nostalgia as a coping mechanism. Reflecting on a happy, joyful event or experience can give us comfort and support while working through a present difficulty. For example, dipping into nostalgia can help us get through a difficult event such as the death of a loved one.

The reminiscence bump refers to having an increased number of autobiographical memories from adolescence and early adulthood (the bump ) relative to other periods of life. There are several possible reasons why this period of life stays with people , including the emerging importance of social relationships to adolescents and the concentration of personally significant milestones at around this time.

The peak-end rule is a concept that helps explain why people remember personal experiences as being more or less positive or negative  than they might have rated the event when it actually occurred. These retrospective evaluations are especially influenced by the peak moments of the experience—the high point in positive or negative emotional intensity—as well as the emotional experience at its end. 

Solastalgia is a term coined in 2003 by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht to capture the longing for one's immediate surroundings or homeland as it once existed, prior to environmental change. It is a portmanteau of the words "solace" and "nostalgia." Solastalgia can be evoked by man-made change or by natural disasters such as wildfires that destroy a town or region. It implies a longing for a physical place that has been irrevocably altered. 

By dipping into nostalgia , we can develop a narrative of who we are. We are connected to our past and feel a sense of continuity through nostalgia. This identity -shaping can also apply to a collective group, such as friends and family.

A shared history can bring a group of people together, giving them a sense of meaning and connection. Nostalgia fosters social bonding and commonality. These can be events of the past remembered by members of a particular group—say, a shared ethnic group—which may differ from how the events are remembered by people in other groups. Collective memory may also be used to describe the remembering that happens within a smaller group, such as when members of a family discuss a shared experience or when people work together to help each other remember factual information, sometimes called collaborative recall.

Nostalgia is, for the most part, positive and helpful. However, being obsessed with the past can lead to maladaptive behavior; for instance, not being able to move forward with future plans or foregoing the present day while lingering on a long gone past. 

Being stuck in the past can bring on rumination, loneliness, isolation, and even depression ; seeking guidance from a mental health professional can help address difficult emotions.

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[ no- stal -j uh , -jee- uh , n uh - ]

a nostalgia for his college days.

• something that elicits or displays nostalgia.

/ -dʒɪə; nɒˈstældʒə /

• a yearning for the return of past circumstances, events, etc
• the evocation of this emotion, as in a book, film, etc
• longing for home or family; homesickness

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Other words from.

• nos·talgic adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of nostalgia 1

Example Sentences

If hitchhiking stirs your nostalgia, it is probably date-stamped with Sanderson’s era.

To be fair, that “West Wing” episode wasn’t just the whipped topping of liberal nostalgia but the floor-wax of a fundraising effort, as are many of the most memorable cultural products that have come out this season.

Instant Pot spaghetti delivers a saucy dose of nostalgia, with little hands-on effort

Researchers know that reminiscing or having nostalgia about drinking or smoking is one of the major risk factors for relapse.

Bankable nostalgiaFord isn’t afraid to look to the past and trade on nostalgia—take the Ford GT and its entire Mustang line for evidence.

De Robertis, an East Village mainstay, closes tomorrow—a moment for nostalgia, but also pragmatism.

In “Back Home,” Gil also revisits the nostalgia for the South explored in his Johns Hopkins thesis, “Circle of Stone.”

Yet her work is all heart, her flights of fancy rich with nostalgia without being mawkish.

Levin rightly disparages the “nostalgia” that he says “blinds” both liberals and conservatives to this new reality.

The books are not nostalgia, and I would hate for them to be thought of as nostalgia.

He almost felt the old sense of imprisonment, of aching nostalgia, of having lost his liberty.

His trapped feeling increased, and nostalgia began to bore into him.

And so a great nostalgia had come over Shane Campbell on this voyage for the Syrian port and the wife he had married there.

He was not on her plane, but, as he heard her, he for the time believed in its existence and felt a remote nostalgia.

The nostalgia of the boards is a disease your love might not have warded off.

Related Words

• sentimentality
• wistfulness

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Definition of nostalgia noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

• a sense/wave/pang of nostalgia
• She is filled with nostalgia for her own college days.
• He thought back to his time as a student and felt no nostalgia for any of it.
• I remember it with great nostalgia.
• Nostalgia buffs gathered for the auction of wartime memorabilia.
• She felt great nostalgia for the old way of life.
• She remembers her life as a singer with a certain wistful nostalgia.
• The college reunion was a great nostalgia trip.
• an evening of pure nostalgia
• with nostalgia
• nostalgia for
• a feeling of nostalgia
• a sense of nostalgia

Take your English to the next level

The Oxford Learner’s Thesaurus explains the difference between groups of similar words. Try it for free as part of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary app

Essays on Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a powerful emotion that can transport us back to cherished memories and moments from the past. It can be a great topic for an essay, as it allows us to explore our emotions and experiences in a meaningful way. Whether you want to write about the impact of nostalgia on our lives or dive into specific memories and their significance, there are endless possibilities for exploring this theme.

When choosing a topic for an essay on nostalgia, consider what aspects of the emotion resonate with you the most. Are you drawn to the idea of exploring the role of nostalgia in shaping our identities, or do you want to focus on a specific nostalgic experience from your own life? You could also consider analyzing the cultural significance of nostalgia, or even its impact on mental health and well-being.

For an argumentative essay on nostalgia, you might consider topics such as "The Role of Nostalgia in Shaping Personal Identity" or "The Cultural Importance of Nostalgia in Art and Media." For a cause and effect essay, topics like "The Effects of Nostalgia on Mental Health" or "How Nostalgia Shapes Our Decision-Making Process" could be compelling. If you're interested in writing an opinion essay, topics such as "Why Nostalgia Is a Universal Emotion" or "The Dangers of Living in the Past" could spark interesting discussions. Finally, for an informative essay, topics like "The History of Nostalgia as a Concept" or "The Psychological Mechanisms Behind Nostalgia" could provide rich material to explore.

For a thesis statement on nostalgia, consider statements like "Nostalgia serves as a powerful force in shaping our personal narratives and sense of self" or "Nostalgia can have both positive and negative effects on our emotional well-being." When writing an to a nostalgia essay, you could begin by evoking a specific nostalgic memory, exploring its significance, and setting the stage for the themes you'll explore. In a , you might reflect on the broader implications of your exploration of nostalgia, tying together the themes you've discussed and leaving the reader with a sense of closure and insight.

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Nostalgia—How to Enjoy Reflecting on the Past

and how to deal with the negative effects of being too nostalgic.

Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

Dr. Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and a professor at Yeshiva University’s clinical psychology doctoral program.

Klaus Vedfelt / Getty Images

Nostalgia Used to Be Considered a Neurological Illness

Examples of nostalgia from popular culture, types of nostalgia, benefits of being nostalgic.

• Can You Be Too Nostalgic?

How to Avoid the Negative Effects of Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Nostalgia is usually triggered by something reminding an individual of an experience from the past. It is often characterized as a longing or desire to return to a former time or place.

Nostalgia can also be thought of as "the memory of happiness," as it is often associated with happy memories from the past. It can be a source of comfort in times of sadness or distress.

However, nostalgia is not just about happy memories; it can also be about longing for a time when things were simpler, or for a time when we felt more connected to others.

Press Play to Learn What the Sentimental Items You Keep Say About You

Hosted by Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares how to determine what your sentimental items say about you. Click below to listen now.

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Nostalgia is a relatively new concept. The word was first coined in 1688 by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer, who defined it as a neurological illness of continually thinking about one's homeland and longing for return.

It was not until the 19th century that nostalgia began to be seen as a positive sentiment, rather than a pathological condition. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, for example, saw nostalgia as a way of reconnecting with our past and understanding our present. For Jung, nostalgia was a way to access the " collective unconscious "—the shared history and experiences that we all have as human beings.

During the First World War, nostalgia was once again associated with illness, as soldiers away at battle longed for the comforts of home. However, after the war ended, nostalgia once again became a positive sentiment.

There are many examples of nostalgia in popular culture. The film It's a Wonderful Life (1946) is often cited as one of the most nostalgic films ever made. The film tells the story of George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart), a man who is considering suicide on Christmas Eve.

However, he is visited by an angel who shows him how different his life, and the lives of those around him, would have been if he had never been born. The film's sentimental portrayal of small-town life in the early 20th century has helped to make it a holiday classic.

The television series The Wonder Years (1988-1993) is another example of nostalgia. The show tells the story of Kevin Arnold (played by Fred Savage), a boy growing up in the suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s. The show is notable for its use of voice-over narration from Kevin's older self, which gives the show a nostalgic feeling.

The song "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston (originally released in 1992) is often cited as a nostalgic song. The song was written by Dolly Parton and is about a woman who is leaving her lover. However, she promises to always love him, even though they are no longer together. The song's sentimental lyrics and melody have helped to make it one of the most popular love songs of all time.

There are two types of nostalgia: positive and negative.

• Positive nostalgia is characterized by happy, rose-tinted memories of the past. It is often associated with feelings of warmth, happiness, and comfort.
• Negative nostalgia , on the other hand, is characterized by bittersweet or even painful memories of the past. It is often associated with longing, sadness, and regret.

Nostalgia can also be divided into three different categories: personal, social, and cultural.

• Personal nostalgia is characterized by memories of specific people or events from one's own life.
• Social nostalgia is characterized by memories of a time when one felt more connected to others.
• Cultural nostalgia is characterized by memories of a time when one felt more connected to their culture.

Nostalgia has been shown to have a number of benefits. For example, nostalgia has been shown to:

• Increase self-esteem
• Provide a sense of social support
• Help people to cope with difficult life transitions, such as divorce, retirement, and death

Nostalgia can also have positive effects on physical health. For example, nostalgia has been shown to boost immune function and reduce stress levels. Nostalgia can also help to increase life satisfaction and reduce anxiety.

Can You Be Too Nostalgic?—Negative Effects

However, nostalgia can also have negative effects. For example, nostalgia can:

• Lead to a sense of loneliness and isolation
• Cause people to dwell on the past and become unhappy with the present
• Make people less likely to take action in the present

There are a few things you can do to avoid the negative effects of nostalgia:

• Think about the present moment . What are you doing right now that you enjoy?
• Make an effort to connect with others in the present. Spend time with people you care about. Talk to them about your positive memories.
• Do things that make you happy . Listen to music, go for walks, watch your favorite movie.
• Talk to a therapist . If you're feeling particularly down, talking to a therapist can help.
• Be mindful. Be aware of how much time you spend dwelling on the past.

The Atlantic. When Nostalgia Was a Disease .

Battesti M. Nostalgia in the Army (17th-19th Centuries) .  Front Neurol Neurosci . 2016;38:132-142. doi:10.1159/000442652

Batcho KI. Nostalgia: The bittersweet history of a psychological concept .  Hist Psychol . 2013;16(3):165-176. doi:10.1037/a0032427

National Endowment for the Arts. Did You Know.... It's a Wonderful Life edition .

Biography. 10 Things You May Not Know About the Wonder Years .

Whitney Houston. Whitney Houston ‘I Will Always Love You’ #1 In 1992

Abeyta AA, Routledge C, Kaslon S. Combating Loneliness With Nostalgia: Nostalgic Feelings Attenuate Negative Thoughts and Motivations Associated With Loneliness .  Front Psychol . 2020;11:1219. Published 2020 Jun 23. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01219

Newman DB, Sachs ME. The Negative Interactive Effects of Nostalgia and Loneliness on Affect in Daily Life .  Front Psychol . 2020;11:2185. Published 2020 Sep 2. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02185

Jiang T, Cheung WY, Wildschut T, Sedikides C. Nostalgia, reflection, brooding: Psychological benefits and autobiographical memory functions .  Conscious Cogn . 2021;90:103107. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2021.103107

Ismail S, Christopher G, Dodd E, et al. Psychological and Mnemonic Benefits of Nostalgia for People with Dementia .  J Alzheimers Dis . 2018;65(4):1327-1344. doi:10.3233/JAD-180075

Juhl J, Wildschut T, Sedikides C, Xiong X, Zhou X. Nostalgia promotes help seeking by fostering social connectedness .  Emotion . 2021;21(3):631-643. doi:10.1037/emo0000720

Batcho KI. Nostalgia: retreat or support in difficult times? .  Am J Psychol . 2013;126(3):355-367. doi:10.5406/amerjpsyc.126.3.0355

Newman DB, Sachs ME, Stone AA, Schwarz N. Nostalgia and well-being in daily life: An ecological validity perspective .  J Pers Soc Psychol . 2020;118(2):325-347. doi:10.1037/pspp0000236

By Arlin Cuncic, MA Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

BOSTON'S PREMIER ONLINE ARTS MAGAZINE

Book Review: “Was It Yesterday?: Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television” — Looking at the Past, Fearlessly

By Allen Michie

The essays in this excellent volume consistently show that nostalgia is about something, and it matters.

Was It Yesterday?: Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television , Ed.Matthew Leggatt. SUNY Press, 294 pages, Hardcover, $95, Kindle, $32.95

These are the good ol’ days for nostalgia. Movies and television have been wallowing in it for the last several years, and audiences sigh wistfully, tuning in for more. Here are a few arbitrary examples from the 2021 Emmy and Academy Award nominees in the Drama category: The Crown , Pose , This Is Us, Mank, Minari, and The Trial of the Chicago 7. Going back a few years, the surplus of backward-looking hits includes  Stranger Things , La La Land , Mad Men , American Hustle , Ready Player One , and Wandavision. This is not to mention all the reboots, comic book cinema, and Disney live-action remakes of movies ticket-buying parents remember from their childhoods.

To document and analyze all this extravagant quasi-remembering, editor Matthew Leggatt has assembled a collection of academic essays, Was It Yesterday?: Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television , part of SUNY Press’s Horizons of Cinema series. “Whether you believe that the wave of nostalgia we’re currently experiencing offers positive hopes for reengaging with history, or whether you see a warning that our culture is in full retreat from the present, there is evidently much more to nostalgia than just the formation of catchy political slogans or the recycling, remaking, and rebooting of a few old movies and TV series,” Leggatt writes. “Nostalgia is an industry, but it is also, as scholars have noted, an amalgam of a complex web of different affects, practices, aesthetics, emotions, and fetishes.”

All 14 of these diverse and often brilliant essays are revelatory because they accept how much is at stake. The sweetness of nostalgia is not often valued here. (There are exceptions, such as Daniel Varndell’s sensitive comparison of Julie Andrews echoing scenes from The Sound of Music  in  The Princess Diaries  movies.) Nostalgia is usually seen as less of a personal emotion than a social force. How it is applied for both good and ill — and profit and loss — depends on a number of different artistic and cultural motivations. As these authors consider an impressive array of films and television shows from silent films to 21st-century blockbusters, they explore nostalgia’s force and appeal. Nostalgia is a way to negotiate difficult periods of history, avoid history altogether, radicalize the future (to both the left and right), anesthetize the pliant masses in a materialist economy, enter a self-referential hall of mirrors, and even structure the very nature of memory and identity. Was it Yesterday?  is no sentimental journey

It’s a strength of the collection that “nostalgia” is given no single unifying definition. Jason Sperb’s superb essay breaks the concept down into “affective,” “peripheral,” “representational,” and “simulacric” nostalgias, each with its own common plot patterns. Sperb makes a sharp distinction between nostalgia and history that is both useful and, while it is necessarily oversimplified, true:

The authors provide several other definitions and categorizations of nostalgia. Christine Sprengler equates it with “metamodernism,” Ross P. Garner identifies “memetic tangible nostalgia” in such physical objects as souvenirs and fan merchandise, and Fran Mason discusses a “spatialized past” that includes landscapes. Tracey Mollet sensibly returns to the roots of the word itself as a foundation for her argument about modern conceptions of home and family embedded in the ’80s series Stranger Things : “Derived from the word nostos , ‘to return home,’ and algia , indicative of a yearning or a longing, nostalgia literally means ‘homesickness.’”

Having a variety of definitions is a benefit, but boundaries need to be drawn. At times, historical fiction, documentary realism, and nostalgia are perceived to have a shifting, kaleidoscopic relationship. Ian Peters recognizes this in his treatment of two TV series about the Cold War, Americans and Deutschland 83/86 . Sometimes, as in our post-9/11 existence, programs about the recent past can be “less a celebration of history and more a reminder that the past and the present are eerily similar…. The resulting programs are a hybrid of nostalgia and antinostalgia that both celebrates the past and criticizes the present for failing to learn from it.” Peters comes up with another example of how, given shifting current events, something that starts out as a historical fiction becomes fodder for nostalgia. Trump’s election in 2016 was both a cause and a symptom of the US’s obsession with nostalgia, which began with the cultural strategy of Ronald Reagan. “Donald Trump was elected on the basis of nostalgia, in his infamous pronouncements to ‘Make America Great Again (emphasis mine),” writes Mollet. Of course, Reagan plugged nostalgic fantasies into the Republican Party platform long before Trump exploited them. Leggatt labels Trump a “Reagan-like imposter.”

It is difficult to say whether “sociopolitical issues of the past” dominate the analyses in the book. It might be expected that a collection of academic essays would emphasize nostalgia (along with every other supporting aspect of the entertainment industry) as a sociopolitical construction driven by bourgeois class consciousness and an unrelenting profit motive. There are essays here that do that, as in Sperb’s description of two trends in Hollywood’s fascination with nostalgia: “The first is its troubling (and unresolvable) tensions with historical consciousness in a consumer culture that largely defines the past according to its financial worth. The second, following that point, is that nostalgia is itself often the commodity that people desire when consuming popular media, not the film or TV show that facilitates it.”

The center of gravity for the sociopolitical themes in many of the volume’s essays is theorist Frederic Jameson. (It became a rather distracting game for me to see how long I would have to read an essay before his name came up.) Jameson’s famous essays “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” (1983) and “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” (1984, later a book in 1990) trademarked what has become the Marxist default position on postmodernism. The argument in a nutshell: nostalgic films are oversimplified pastiches of clichés, valuing style over substance and image over reality, so conservative corporate interests can distract us from dealing with history’s urgent demands. “Nostalgia art gives us the image of various generations of the past as fashion-plate images that entertain no determinable ideological relationship to other moments of time,” Jameson asserts. “They are not the outcome of anything, nor are they the antecedents of our present; they are simply images.” As Mason summarizes it, the ’70s keeps coming up in Jameson’s work because the ’70s were “already nostalgic for signs of cultural cohesion, authenticity, originality, or individuality, the loss of which are part of the wider constellation of postmodernism.”

Refreshingly, many of the essayists in Was It Yesterday? push back against the notion that nostalgia is only about images reflecting empty images. Postmodernism is becoming (or maybe has already become) not the vehicle of nostalgia, but the subject of it. It’s just so ’90s. Political relevance is far more urgent in the 2020s. For example, Vera Dika argues that Get Out is a horror movie pastiche of other horror movies such as Eyes Without a Face , Psycho , and Ringu (in addition to substantially revisiting Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner , which I suppose was a kind of white suburban horror movie in 1967). But Dika is not content to end it as Jameson would, where (as Dika puts it) “the return of older cultural productions in new works closes us to the past, offering only aesthetic styles on a depthless surface.” Instead, this pastiche of older films invites critical thinking because it “opposes the past to the present, and so fosters a dialogue…. the references are metaphorically used to direct attention to race relations, to the threat posed to blacks by white society.”

Mason’s essay places another spin on Jameson’s notion that ’70s nostalgia is a pointless house of cards built on nothing but itself. Mason considers the interesting case of alternate realities — movies like Inglourious Basterds or the second season of Fargo , where historical events are altered, omitted, or reimagined. Mason calls this a “spatialized past, a landscape or country that exists as a self-contained textual reality, a time capsule of the past in which events are imagined differently to the past as it happened.” The ’70s are perfect for this kind of “temporal-free zone,” but not because it was an era that longed for cohesion and authenticity. It’s because “the 1970s is a decade without the kind of popular cultural metanarrative that attaches to, for example, the 1950s and its associations with conformism, Cold War politics, suburban living, and postwar consumer society, the countercultural ‘swinging sixties,’ or the materialistic Reaganite 1980s.” Mason quotes Bruce Schulman: the ’70s is an “‘eminently forgettable decade’ that produces only empty signs of ‘bad clothes, bad hair, and bad music’.” In other words, the ’70s was so boring that no one cares much if you misremember it. Still, note the critical language of “metanarratives” and “empty signs” — this is cultural deconstruction, not postmodernism. The essays in this volume consistently show that nostalgia is about something, and it matters . Perhaps it’s time to put away your copy of Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism next to your MC Hammer CD and Pretty Woman VHS.

Aaron Tveit (left) and Julianne Hough rehearse for Grease Live! . Photo: Kevin Estrada/FOX

So, what’s new in nostalgia this year? Among the things that the 2020s have that previous decades didn’t is an always-on media landscape driven by boardrooms full of young marketing executives who know their stuff. One of the most original essays in the volume is “On the Limits of Nostalgia: Understanding the Marketplace for Remaking and Rebooting the Hollywood Musical” by Justin Wyatt, who gives the television special Grease Live! (2016) perhaps its debut analysis in an academic publication. Why was Grease Live! (a nostalgic remake of a nostalgic movie of a nostalgic Broadway show) an enormous hit while the 2011 remake of Footloose and the multiple remakes of Fame were flops? Wyatt nimbly breaks it down. One of the major reasons: Grease Live! masterfully employed what Wyatt calls “transmedia storytelling,” using multiple “entry points” into youth culture. “While a vast majority of television shows and events push social media hashtags,” he writes, “ Grease Live! benefited significantly by making its social media request while the event was actually happening. Viewers were reminded to access behind-the-scenes footage on the show’s Facebook page. In addition, viewers were asked to tweet the hashtag #GreaseLive, resulting in more than two million tweets.”

Aiding and abetting this fourth-wall-breaking party atmosphere was the decision to incorporate audience members into the production. Also, actors were seen physically leaving the back lot soundstage on live TV and running over to a nearby carnival: “The suggestion is that the world of Grease may seem artificial, but it plays out just as much in the real world as in the dramatic one.” Grease Live!  succeeded because it treated nostalgia in a distinctly contemporary way: “The immersive experience, the transparency of the production, and the ability to bring the viewer into the musical through the trope of liveness all affect the building blocks of the creative property. These entry points also suggest that nostalgia may work best when made explicit, with the difference between the now (the live moment) and the past (the media property) underscored.”

Something else that’s very 2020s about current nostalgia trends is the material culture surrounding it. Garner’s essay “Mimetic Tangible Nostalgia and Spatial Cosplay: Replica Merchandise and Place in Fandom’s Material Cultures” calls attention to the physical manifestations of movie and TV nostalgia hawked via collectable souvenirs, action figures, and replicas. A life-sized model of Thanos’s Infinity Gauntlet from Avengers: Infinity War will set you back about $1,300. What drives people to buy such things, attend Star Trek conventions, and court one another at Comic-Con dressed as Wookies? Garner speculates via murky sentences: : “If dressing the fan body ‘allows fans to visualize their affect for certain texts,’ then by extension, spatial cosplayers express their affect through mimetic tangible nostalgia’s potential to ontologically bridge between discursively bounded notions of reality and fiction and past and present.” Much analysis is given to where people decide to put their souvenir stuff (or, as Garner puts it, people must “work within constraints arising out of nationally — and historically — specific discourses of domestic architecture when constructing personal spaces that communicate mimetic tangible nostalgia”). The conclusion: you can’t line up your action figure collection in your office at work (computer support technicians perhaps excepted) unless you want your boss to hit you with some unpleasant structuring discourses: “While a fan-occupier may decorate an office (cubicle) with replica items to perform their fan attachments, these demonstrations of individual agency may exist in tension with other structuring discourses, such as the expectations of professional identities or management policies.” The question of whether you should wear your Incredible Hulk outfit to the office is left pending. “Further investigation is required into how mimetic tangible nostalgia sits alongside discourses structuring (potential) spatial cosplay sites.” At no point does Garner consider the motive of — let alone come up with jargon for — fun .

The volume ends appropriately with two excellent essays that lighten the tone in a way that speaks to both general and academic readers. The preceding essays offered a persuasive overview of what nostalgia is, and how nostalgia works. The final two pieces offer takes on why nostalgia works, widening the focus to consider what a philosophy of nostalgia might be. Murray Pomerance and William Rothman know that a film or TV show can deal with the past without being nostalgic. In “Remembering It Well: Nostalgia, Cinema, Fracture,” Pomerance cites not Jameson but William Wordsworth, recalling that poetry is “powerful emotion recollected in tranquility.” Similarly, “Nostalgia is in the maintenance of feeling through memory, the preservation of insight.” Nostalgia is a yearning for the past, but the past is gone, and the best we can hope for is a hollow simulacrum which may only have a superficial resemblance. After all, nostalgia in the movies and TV is all about other people’s memories, not our own. So is nostalgia therefore a waste of time? Is it just a pointless indulgence?

A life-sized model of Thanos’s Infinity Gauntlet from Avengers: Infinity War will set you back about $1,300.

“Fond memory may not be an aspiration to another life, it may be an affirmation of the life we have, and that life includes images, not just things,” Pomerance answers. Nostalgia can usefully serve as a kind of fantasy therapy. With confidently nonacademic language and a Wordsworthian perspective, Pomerance writes, “Nostalgia may be nothing other than our way of accessing a past fantasy, in whole or in part, the fantasy by its nature being alive in itself, in the strange way that fantasies having once come alive remain alive. Reinvocation is thus a blossoming of life.”

Rothman has the final words in his insightful (and somewhat cranky) essay “Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be.” Props to editor Leggatt for ending the volume with an essay that cuts against the grain of all those that came before. Rothman claims that American movies are spending far less time on nostalgia now than they did during the ’40s and early ’50s (for example, How Green Was My Valley or Singin’ in the Rain ). Examining how and why movies from that era looked back at what was perceived as an easier prewar period, Rothman discovers something essential to nostalgia. It’s not about commerce, or about references to other movies, or sanitizing the painful past, or seeking antidotes for our painful present. It’s about childhood. Nostalgia has a “requisite wistful yearning, its longing for a happier, freer time that has slipped into the past, like childhood, and is now accessible only in memory. Indeed, I don’t think it’s possible to experience nostalgia without knowing, in one’s heart, that one’s childhood is past, that one is no longer entitled to the privileges and responsibilities (or rather, irresponsibilities) we grant to children.”

From there Rothman dares to ask the next logical question. Since nostalgia is “knowledge of the irrecoverable loss of something precious to us,” then how can it be pleasurable? The impossibility of bringing the past into the present, and of keeping the present from slipping into the past, provides “a bittersweet pleasure akin to what the Japanese call mono no aware , the exquisite sense of the fleetingness of all beauty.” Nostalgia seizes us, and we willingly return to its grip, because “Shame, guilt, and rancor haunt so much of our lives that we are often fearful of remembering the past, but when we feel nostalgic, we look back at our past without fear.”

Allen Michie works in higher education administration in Austin, TX.

Fantastic precis of the book, Allen. In music, nostalgia plays out in its own, complicated fashion. On one hand: “That was our song…” “That’s what they were playing when I broke my arm in a mosh pit…” etc. That same effect happens with jazz, but you also have the split between what people think is “real” jazz. Are people indulging in nostalgia when they classify Trad or Bop as more real than say, hip-hop hybrids or free playing? This begs the question of the role of aesthetics in nostalgia, which is implicit in the essays but as far as I can see is not explicitly tackled.

I fully agree about music. Maybe that’s another book. An entire aesthetic of nostalgia (sketched out in the final two essays here) would be interesting. Perhaps a reader can point us to a book that already does that. For example, there’s clearly nostalgia in film and music, but what about dance (maybe the Lindy Hop revival)? Or graphic arts (why is Norman Rockwell nostalgic but not, say, Winslow Homer)? Does nostalgia work the same way in theater as it does in film (the chapter on “Grease Live!” suggests maybe not)?

It seems with current academic trends favoring affect and aesthetics, nostalgia is ripe for more exploration.

Your question about classification being a function of nostalgia brings up an interesting point that also appears in the reviewed book. Nostalgia is a personal thing, only about you, and only for you (as in your example, “That’s what they were playing when I broke my arm in a mosh pit”). But when you’re watching a nostalgic movie or TV show, it’s someone else’s nostalgia in which you’re participating. Another approach, as in “Ready Player One,” is to cast a wide net for all kinds of things about a certain time period and hope that at least a few things resonate personally for the audience (“I remember that breakfast cereal when I was growing up!”). But what’s really going on when we feel someone else’s nostalgia? Are we agreeing to participate in it, or are we manipulated by it, and are our feelings vicarious ones? Does that make them insincere and therefore less powerful? Is it a good or bad thing to have emotional investment in someone else’s memories? Or, as some essays suggest, do our own memories of the past get distorted or even replaced by images from film and TV?

As you say, seeing an image can seem voyeuristic, while music seems to have the power to strike deepest.

I think it’s safe to say that our own memories of the past are already distorted–a simulacrum we create. Other memories have some obvious survivalist function (this is my house, my dog, my boss…), but who knows what function nostalgia–one form of memory–serves.

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Nostimon— Greek

• Examples: “ After many years traveling the world, I began to feel nostimon and knew it was time to return home, where I ultimately belonged.” [ancient]
• “My son came home from preschool today and told me he met a little girl he wants to marry when they’re old enough—it was so nostimon .” [modern]

Saudade— Portuguese and Galician

• Example: “ Despite the decades that have passed, I well up with an overpowering sense of saudade when I think back on the first summer I ever fell in love.”

Sehnsucht— German

• Example: “It seems silly, but something about this particular cast of light makes me long for the French Riviera circa 1923… It’s probably just sehnsucht. ”

Dor— Romanian

• Example: “ I used to come home every day to a snack my grandmother made me and I’d eat it watching after-school cartoons while she ironed—it was so cozy that thinking about it fills me with dor .”

Toska— Russian

• Example: “When it rains all afternoon I sometimes succumb to toska and spend hours staring out the window in a gloomy daze.”

Mono no aware— Japanese

• Example: “ When the seasons change so quickly and the weeks all start blending together, I remind myself of mono no aware and try to be more conscious of everyday beauty.”