Nostalgia was first coined in 1668 by a medical student, Johannes Hofer, who combined the Greek words ‘nostos’ (homecoming/returning home) and ‘algos’ (pain) to create the term, first described as a disease affecting soldiers, students and others who had to be away from home. Now, in the 21st century, nostalgia is viewed as part of the human experience, rather than an ailment, and is significantly increasing due to recent economic and social factors such as cost of living, the rise of technology, and social media.
55% of Brits would rather travel to the past than the future, according to a recent survey conducted by YouGov. Although our minds may be distorted, as a collective we tend to view our memories as better than what actually happened. This is because of the effects nostalgia brings; painting the past with a joyful and exciting brush and making us forget the less pleasant moments, which may be more accurate.
Literature and linguistics professor and journalist for Psychology Today, Hal McDonald, said: “You can’t remember everything, so your brain has to offload some things, and we know enough people who hang onto their regrets, they’re miserable. [If nostalgia is powerful] to the extent that you can let go of the negative aspects of experiences from the past, that would be a survival instinct for mental health. Much of the negativity for our past is involved in uncertainty, [for example] you don’t know how that test was gonna turn out, or you don’t know how that job interview was gonna go, but looking back on it, you know how those turned out so the uncertainty’s gone and so the reality of it was probably far less formidable than you anticipated, and so it [the negativity] kind of just fades away and we’re leaving only the good stuff behind.”
This is important as it shows how nostalgia can be something of a survival tactic for the brain. If it doesn’t have to acknowledge the bad things that happened in our pasts, it doesn’t have to process unpleasant emotions, instead, it skews our memory to protect us from those emotions, inaccurate as it may be.
In another study done by the American Psychological Association, they found that 72% of people felt more positive whilst being nostalgic, while 51% said that nostalgia had a negative effect on them, with 23% of those people having an overlap, demonstrating that nostalgia can be a good and bad feeling simultaneously. The existence of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nostalgia has been documented by cultural theorist Svelana Boym as different subcategories of nostalgia; restorative and reflective. Restorative is the ‘nostos’ (homecoming), while reflective is the ‘algos’ (pain). The two can be felt at the same time or separately, however, it is important to have nuance in your thinking, and be accepting of the fact that conflicting feelings are still valid.
McDonald said: “[Nostalgia] establishes [and] reminds yourself of who you are and what was important to you in the past. If you remember something that gave you pleasure from the past, it reminds you that that can still give you pleasure in the future and can keep you on track, remind you of who you are. Generally, I think [with] the whole restorative-reflective distinction, the way I interpret it, was reflective [nostalgia] is an acknowledgement that the past has passed, never to be relived again. But it’s an appreciation of the memories in an aesthetic sense. Whereas restorative is ‘I want to relive that moment’ and that’s where you get in trouble because nostalgia then becomes comparative. [If] you’re comparing the past with the present, the future starts looking pretty bleak then. The present and future can never live up to the past because of the positivity bias, our brains are wired to forget the negative things. So, if you’re comparing them, our past and future, [and] our present and past, the present is always gonna look bad and that makes the future look bad as well.”
Nostalgia is an important emotion, as restorative nostalgia may let us reflect on a memory with loved ones who have passed away or places that we wish to visit again some day. Reflective nostalgia helps us to process things that may have happened, whether that be past relationships that have fallen apart, we can have nostalgic feelings towards these people or ideas while allowing it to be a part of our pasts, and eventually move on.
Nostalgia affects more than just our brains, it alters our culture. Especially with music, people tend to prefer and almost exclusively request ‘throwback’ songs to radio stations over what’s currently coming out. This can be seen constantly in music streaming platforms such as Spotify. Constantly playlist or radio stations such as “Nostalgia 2000’s Mix” are pushed to users, with songs that Spotify’s algorithms pick up on you listening to are wrapped up in a throwback mix.
Grace Nicoll, radio presenter on Heart Scotland, said: “[The] best time of my life so far has probably been when I was in high school, so people always look back to when they were their most happiest, so it’s maybe high school, childhood, then afterwards it’s wedding songs, first dance music, songs that remind them of their partner or whoever it may be, their children, happy moments when they were born. Quite a lot of the time you’ll get ‘oh my daughter or son was born to this particular song that was on the radio when I was having a baby’ so it’s always something linked to family or friends potentially rather than just the moment itself, it always has to have somebody incorporated with it.
[Overall] the majority of requests and songs are from generations gone by. Music these days, they just don’t make it the way that they used to. I always remember a quote being said at the Eurovision song contest by the winner that took home gold for Portugal one year (Salvador Sobral), he said ‘we’re living in a life of fast-food music where music has no content and no reason’.”
A huge part of nostalgia is sensory triggers, such as a sound or scent that reminds you of that particular time. It’s a large reason why we feel those memories so intensely, it’s an immersive emotion.
Kathleen Nelson, grew up in the nineties and resonates with the sensory triggers that come with nostalgia deeply, she said: “Smell gets me mostly. I remember smells a lot, the smells of my granny’s house, that sounds weird because my granny was a smoker, but somebody walks past and there’s certain times where I can smell it and it just reminds me of my granny. I don’t know if it’s a certain type of cigarette but there’s certain smells and I wonder if anybody else has that [same] smell and remembers the same thing.”
She added: “[We like the past] because we’ve already experienced it. I suppose it would be different if your past wasn’t relatively nice, [for example] if you had a negative past and you were looking forward to the future [more], but you’ve already left it, so you know if it was good, whereas you don’t know what the future holds. It’s less certain than the past, but you’ve done the past and you know it was good and you enjoyed it, or you’ve forgotten the bad bits at least.”
Back when nostalgia was seen as a disease, much like hysteria, the symptoms could extend from crying, anxiety and obsessively thinking about home, to more severe examples ranging from anorexia, negligence of health, and ultimately suicide.
Over time, the definition of nostalgia changed; It was often viewed as a type of depression in the 19th century up until the early 20th century when scholars found the symptoms of severe nostalgia aligned better with conditions such as schizophrenia, anxiety and PTSD (but known as shellshock at the time). Nostalgic patients were treated as neurotic and unable to live in reality, with treatment being music from the patient’s home country/region and letters from family as well as the more extreme cases; prescribing opium, threatening to have the patients burial far from home to shock them into acceptance, and the most obvious and effective answer – letting the patient return to their home (A medical and cultural history of nostalgia – Hektoen International).
Although nostalgia can often be painful, that’s only the shadow behind the crescent moon, as it can also be a very beautiful and cherished feeling that transcends our differences as people. However, in general, the reason that we tend to use nostalgia as a way to avoid the present as well as fears regarding the future, is that the past is the only thing that is concrete, and that we can be certain of.While is is not necessarily negative, having an excess amount of nostalgia can be avoidance of the present. As stoic philosophiser Seneca, quotes; “A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his happiness to the present.”
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