“These fragments I have shored against my ruins.”
– T. S. Eliot, Fisher King in “The Waste Land”
It is believed the term “nostalgia” was inadvertently inspired by the adventures of Odysseus – the protagonist of Homer's epic, the Odyssey. After victory in the Trojan War, Odysseus set sail for his native island of Ithaca to reunite with his faithful wife, Penelope. For three years, the wandering hero fought many monsters, evil-doers, and mischievous Gods.
And, for another seven years, Odysseus took respite in the arms of the beautiful sea nymph Calypso, who feel in love with him. Calypso enchanted Odysseus with her singing and used her charms in an effort to make Odysseus forget his home. In search of his acceptance in marriage, Calypso offered to make Odysseus immortal if he stayed with her on the island of Ogygia.
This is where nostalgia enters the tale. The attraction quickly waned and Odysseus was eager to return to his wife, Penelope, and his throne although he had no ship, crew, or other means to leave. Staring blankly out to sea as he sat on the beach, Odysseus was desperately homesick – wanting to take his leave of the luscious Ogygian nymph and set sail for home on the island of Ithaca.
So, Odysseus appealed to his patron, Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war. Athena, who admired Odysseus for his great cunning and intelligence, had a soft spot for the brave and wily epic hero – the bond between them arises from the similarities of their natures. As the Goddess herself puts it in Book 13:
“We both know tricks, since you are by far the best among all men in counsel and tales, but I among all the Gods have renown for wit (metis) and tricks.”
Athena asked Zeus to order the release of Odysseus from the island, and Zeus ordered the messenger Hermes to tell Calypso to set Odysseus free, for it was not his destiny to live with her forever. During the process, Calypso angrily comments on how the gods hate goddesses having affairs with mortals, but eventually she concedes, sending Odysseus on his way after providing him with wine, bread, and the materials for a raft.
“Full well I acknowledge,” Odysseus replied to his mistress, “Prudent Penelope cannot compare with your stature or beauty, for she is only a mortal, and you are immortal and ageless. Nevertheless, it is she whom I daily desire and pine for. Therefore I long for my home and to see the day of returning” (Homer, 1921, Book V, pp. 78-79).
History of Homesickness and Nostalgia
The word “nostalgia” is learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of nostos (homecoming) and a Homeric word algos (pain). Nostalgia, then, is literally “the suffering due to relentless yearning for the homeland.” The term nostalgia was coined in the 17th century by the Swiss physician Johaness Hofer (1688/1934) to describe anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home, but references to its meaning can be found in Hippocrates, Cesar, and the Bible.
(Melissa Dahl.."The Little-Known Medical History of Homesickness" New York Magazine. February 25, 2016.)
Believe it or not, traditionally, nostalgia had been conceptualized as a medical disease and a psychiatric disorder. This disease was believed to be confined to the Swiss, a view that persisted through most of the 19th century. Symptoms – including bouts of weeping, irregular heartbeat, and anorexia – were attributed variously to demons inhabiting the middle brain, sharp differentiation in atmospheric pressure wreaking havoc in the brain, or the unremitting clanging of cowbells in the Swiss Alps which damaged the eardrum and brain cells.
(Constantine Sedikides et al. “Nostalgia: past, present, and future.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 304-307. 2008.)
Melissa J. Gismondi, award-winning historian and journalist says doctors recommended various methods to cure nostalgia, from isolating patients in towers – assuming that people who used to live in mountainous regions simply missed the elevation – to avoiding idleness and banning the singing of popular songs like “Home, Sweet Home!”
(Melissa J. Gismondi, “You Can’t Run Away from Homesickness.” The Walrus. November 18, 2020.)
By the mid-nineteenth century some Americans and Europeans were convinced that technological advancements and infrastructure such as the telegraph, the postal service, and steamships would vanquish homesickness once and for all. By 1899, American observers came to a similar conclusion.
“Nostalgia has grown less common in these days of quick communication, of rapid transmission of news and of a widened knowledge of geography,” one American newspaper noted. Homesickness, they suggested, had been eradicated, “except in the case of the very young or the densely ignorant.”
According to historian Susan Matt, the author of Homesickness: An American History and a professor at Weber State University …
“In some realms, including the military, homesickness retained its gravity for a while longer. During the American Civil War, Matt writes, doctors claimed that homesickness had killed some seventy-four men. She also cites Thomas Dodman, the author of What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion and an assistant professor at Columbia University, who notes that the French army recorded fatal cases of nostalgia until 1884. Matt found that, during the First World War, the Canadian military banned musicians from playing the bagpipes, fearing it would tarnish the morale of Scottish Canadian troops and perhaps even impact their overall well-being.
“ … For many others, the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries meant increasing levels of shame attached to homesickness among adults and, sometimes, even among children. By then, social Darwinists, who believed adaptability was a facet of human evolution, had successfully infantilized homesickness. In writings and commentaries on the subject, they attributed the condition to groups they deemed emotionally and intellectually stunted, such as Black Americans and Indigenous peoples – groups that have historically had higher incidences of being forced from their homes – as well as women.
“By the twentieth century, whatever sympathy there had been for homesickness was largely abandoned, thanks in large part to the technological advancements many people believed had made the condition obsolete. In addition to railroads and steamships, there were now telephones, automobiles, and passenger jets, all of which made leaving home seem easier.”
(Susan Matt. Homesickness: An American History. 2014.)
By the beginning of the 20th century, nostalgia was regarded as a psychiatric disorder commonly known as “immigrant psychosis.” Symptoms included anxiety, sadness, and insomnia. By the mid-20th century, psychodynamic approaches considered nostalgia a subconscious desire to return to an earlier life stage, and labeled it a repressive compulsive disorder. Soon thereafter, nostalgia was downgraded to a variant of depression, marked by loss and grief, though still equated with homesickness.
“Nostalgia” was used interchangeably with “homesickness” until roughly the early twentieth century, when nostalgia began evolving into its contemporary definition.
Sedikides's view (2004) of nostalgia can be summarized as follows:
“Nostalgia is a universal experience: It concerns all persons, regardless of age, gender, social class, ethnicity, or other social groupings. Nostalgia is a self-relevant emotion that involves reliving one's past, and in particular events involving one's important but bygone relationships. Its bittersweet content notwithstanding, nostalgia is predominantly positive.
“Furthermore, nostalgia is typically triggered by a threatening stimulus (e.g., death of a loved one, health problems, relationship dissolution, and income loss) or is a deliberate response to an uncomfortable psychological state (e.g., sadness, loneliness, anxiety, and alienation), although it can also be triggered by fortuitous stimuli (e.g., old photographs, letters, or CDs). Most important, nostalgia, by being a stock of positive feelings, can ward off external threat or distressing thoughts.”
(C. Sedikides, T. Wildschut, & D. Baden. “Nostalgia: Conceptual Issues and Existential Functions.” In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of Experimental Existential Psychology. 2004.)
Nostalgia As Strength With Context
Nostalgia is now emerging as a fundamental human strength. It is part of the fabric of everyday life and serves at least four key psychological functions: it generates positive affect, elevates self-esteem, fosters social connectedness, and alleviates existential threat.
By so doing, nostalgia can help to navigate successfully the changes and transformations of daily life. More generally, nostalgia is uniquely positioned to offer integrative insights across such areas of psychology as memory, emotion, the self, and relationships.
Psychologists believe when we wax nostalgic, we rein in happy memories to counter negative emotions. By identifying meaningful moments in our lives, we draw meaning to our lives in general. Nostalgia can provide context to our lives. In bad times we can remember good days. Thus, nostalgia establishes a narrative for us, allowing us to understand that a bad moment is negative in relation to an overall good life.
Nostalgia also provides a foundation for relationships. When couples share nostalgic memories, they feel closer to each other. When friends who have fallen out of touch remember their glory days together, they can rebuild the friendship.
(M. Vess et al. "Nostalgia as a resource for the self". Self and Identity. 2012.)
As the current research indicates, the past can also be a vital resource upon which we might draw to maintain and enhance a sense of meaning. Nostalgia serves a pivotal existential function in that it is a psychological resource that protects and fosters mental health.
Nostalgia is importantly believed to partially ameliorate the harmful repercussions of loneliness. The research constitutes an initial step toward establishing nostalgia as a potent coping mechanism again self-threat and social threat. The past, when appropriately harnessed, can strengthen psychological resistance to the vicissitudes of life.
Science Looks At The Brain on Nostalgia
Homesickness and nostalgia are fascinating emotional concepts with long histories. Neurology tells us nostalgic experiences stimulate metabolic activity and blood flow in several regions of the brain, particularly the frontal, limbic, paralimbic, and midbrain areas.
Interestingly, people who rated higher on the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scale, which measures a person’s tendency to sadness, were more prone to experience nostalgia. But, nostalgia itself is not linked with depression or any other affective disorder.
In fact, one study linked
nostalgia to an overall trait of resilience. Reward centers can be
stimulated through nostalgia. For example, the very common phenomena
of feeling pleasant emotions upon hearing a song from the past, even
if the song was not necessarily a favorite song at the time, is a
nostalgic reward.
However, neurologists tell us that nostalgia can be so easily provoked that it is possible to become addicted to the pleasure of nostalgia, just as a person can become addicted to any activity that stimulates the reward centers of the brain. Nostalgia can be used excessively as a crutch and the positive feelings of nostalgia may serve as a substitute for living in the present-day if current, real life troubles take more effort than a person can tolerate.
(Heidi Moawad, MD. “The Brain and Nostalgia.” Neurology Live. October 13, 2016.)
More research is needed; however, Tim Wildschut, a professor of social and personality psychology at the University of Southampton in England sheds new light.
Since 2001, he and his colleagues have generated a growing body of evidence that individuals more prone to nostalgia are generally more likely to socialize, feel empathy, and find life meaningful. But their work also suggests a more primitive purpose for the feeling: The same neurology that makes us long for people and places we’ve left behind may have evolved to remind our ancient ancestors of pleasant physical sensations during periods of discomfort and pain.
Eleanor Cummins, science
journalist focusing on the urban environment, reported in Popular
Science …
“In a 2012 study in the journal Emotion, Wildschut’s team showed that lower temperatures make us more nostalgic, and that nostalgia makes us feel toasty even when we’re objectively colder – a bit of magical thinking that could help people persevere in situations that might otherwise feel hopeless. If remembering the warmth of the cave you last called home could trick you into feeling a little less freezing, you might just keep moving long enough to find shelter before your body starts to shut down.
“In the modern era of sweaters and central heating, research suggests that the occasional look backward can also give us a life-affirming boost in more-subtle ways: by increasing self-esteem and protecting against depression.”
Eleanor Cummins. “We once thought nostalgia was a disease, but it might be key to our survival.” Popular Science. April 08, 2020.)
Still the Connection: Homesickness and Nostalgia
Getting back to Homer, how do you deal with that feeling of yearning for the homeland and all of the fragments of life wrapped up in memories of that environment? Homesickness and loneliness from nostalgic, sentimental longing are real. I personally know how devastating these emotions can be.
I'll never forget the first time I took an extended leave from home, a week at scout camp as one of the youngest members – age 11– of my local troop. Even though every day was full of activities and fellowship, about midweek, I was overcome with homesickness, and I desperately longed just to be back home with mom and dad. At the end of the week, I was so glad the camp was over.
Then, much later, there was the summer I spent in Defiance, Ohio – a flatland where a dip in the road was considered a hill. I was working for the Youth Conservation Corp and coming home every other weekend. Still, I became so homesick for my girlfriend (who later became my wife) and the beautiful hills of Southern Ohio that I literally shouted for joy as I drove back home into the perpendicular landscape that broke out around Chillicothe – still 50 miles from my home in Portsmouth.
Dr Miranda van Tilburg has written extensively about homesickness and is the editor of a collection of articles called Psychological Aspects of Geographical Moves, all of which focus on homesickness and acculturation stress (the psychological impact of adapting to a new culture). Van Tilburg says …
“It’s important to prepare yourself for the eventuality of homesickness, There will be certain points in the day that cannot be active; they are passive by nature – times such as eating dinner without a big group around you, or when you’re about to go to sleep or have just woken up. Those are really, really hard times for people because that’s when homesickness will pop up again.”
One company has a novel answer to homesickness. “Homesick,” founded in 2016 is “a home fragrance and lifestyle brand with one simple goal: To bring joy to your home by helping you feel closer to the people, places, and moments that matter most.”
Homesick asks, “How do you capture the spirit of a memory in a way that feels personal and recognizable to everyone?” Here is their answer …
“That’s the question we ask ourselves every day. Luckily, we’re not the only ones with the answers! We speak to anywhere from 30 to 100 people for every candle we develop, visiting local areas, collecting samples, and even extracting scents from food. We’ve discussed childhood memories with local Texans, why books smell so great with veteran librarians, the flora of Central Park with New York horticulturalists, and the finer points of donuts with Dunkin’ superfans. And that's just the start of our process.
“We then try hundreds of different scent combinations, checking back in with the community along the way until we’ve found the perfect balance; an authentic fragrance that will also smell great in your home.
“Inspired by our loyal fans, we’ve expanded the Homesick range to almost 200 different products representing all the things that matter most – from every US state, to multiple cities and countries, to occasions, people and moments.”
(“Homesick. https://homesick.com/. 2020.)
Homesick has Book Club, New Home, Friday Night Football, and Summer Camp scented candles. So now, we can whiff the smell of that longed-for place without guilt or fear. Hey, who knows what might stimulate those good memories and feelings? I have always been a lavender fan, myself. I find the scent very pleasant and calming. And I remember one local football-loving dad who relished his son's high school games so much that he would inhale the odor of his son's dirty, game-worn jersey – sweat fetish? I don't know.
To close, in 1862, as
Matt’s history recounts, an American newspaper told the story of
two girls, Alice and Lotty, who ventured to a nearby farm only to
discover they missed the comfort of everything familiar. They hustled
back home and were relieved to find the old familiar things still
there: the scent of flowers and the sound of ice tinkling in the
milk-pitcher, the raspberries and sponge cake on the tea table, their
mother dressed in white. “How delightful,” the girls
concluded.
Maybe Alice and Lotty had it right. And maybe, as
more of us settle down near our childhood homes, rootedness may come
to be viewed not as a sign of emotional stuntedness but as an
expression of a basic human craving: continuity with the past.
Libby Copeland, freelance writer and previously a staff writer for the Washington Post, reminds us that “once upon a time, we were a nation of proud homebodies. We felt deeply rooted even when we wandered far. And now demographics suggest that we may be reclaiming that mantle, showing ever greater nostalgia for the past, and returning to where we came from in greater numbers – if we ever leave at all.”
Copeland says …
“These days, while it’s not as permissible as it once was for an adult to muse about, say, missing her parents, it is more than permissible to indulge in casual nostalgia for one’s childhood. Specifically, we miss the brands of our childhoods. We fetishize that old Commodore 64, we lament mix tapes having disappeared. We dress like the ‘80s – no, the ‘90s – again, and recycle the past ever faster.”
Author Susan Matt wonders if, in the face of rapid change, we have sublimated our longing for home, for the way things used to be, into a passion for retro objects. This type of nostalgia lets us signal cultural hipness instead of the rootlessness and neediness we feel deep down.
(Libby Copeland. “Are Americans Secretly Homesick?” Slate. October 12, 2011)
Home, Sweet Home
Mid pleasures and
palaces though we may roam
Be it ever so humble, there's no place
like home
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there
Which
seek thro' the world, is ne'er met elsewhere
Home! Home!
Sweet,
sweet home!
There's no place like home
There's no place like
home!
– Lyrics of the parlor ballad adapted from American actor and dramatist John Howard Payne's 1823 opera Clari
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