Nostalgia

(Originally published in my sports page column Self-Propelled

in the Jan. 15 to 21, 2012 issue of the Baguio Chronicle

--- a weekly newspaper based in Baguio City, Philippines.)

THE term ‘nostalgia’ is often used to describe a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.

In common and less clinical usage, ‘nostalgia’ sometimes includes a general interest in past eras and their personalities and events, especially the “good old days”, such as a sudden image, or remembrance of something from one's childhood.

The scientific literature on nostalgia is quite thin, but there are a few fascinating studies that have attempted to pin down the essence of nostalgia, and the reasons that we feel that warm glow when recalling the past. Smell and touch are also strong evokers of nostalgia and memories in general due to the processing of these stimuli first passing through the amygdale --- the emotional seat of the brain.

These recollections of our past are usually important events, people we care about, and places we’ve spent time at. Music is also a strong trigger of nostalgia.

In his book "Great Expectations", Landon Y. Jones wrote: " . . . nostalgia has very little to do with the comparative merits of the pop music of the ‘50s versus the music of the ‘70s . . . nostalgia tells us more about the conditions of the present than the past . . . nostalgia speaks most clearly about the strains our generation has faced dealing with a troubling present and an uncertain future".

Jones also theorized that “nostalgia reflects the discontinuities of the baby boom generation's turbulent coming of age . . . the giant generation, ill at ease with its place in a society that has yet to metabolize it, looks back to the last time it knew when its life was serene and its identity more certain . . . nostalgia is the special affliction of people who have traveled so far or so rapidly in space and time, that they are confused by the present and have no taste for the future.”

“Nostalgia thrives on dislocations in the life cycle whether in the life of an individual or the life of a generation . . . since nostalgia attempts to bridge gaps in our lives, between old selves and new selves, it follows that it is most likely to break out at times when disruptions are the sharpest . . . staggered and disturbed by change, questioning all its assumptions about society and the family, the baby boom (generation) was winding up with something close to a collective identity crisis," he said.

Jones concluded that “nostalgia is a functional emotion which, by shoring up a sagging sense of identity, can help either a person or a generation to cope up with difficult times . . . in nostalgia, a generation have found a haven from anxiety and a means of reaffirming stable identities badly shaken during the passage from the adolescence . . . if offers temporary relief . . . it was not that the past was so wonderful . . . (but) it was that the present is so troubling . . . music, with its ability to distill the most complex emotions into a brief minutes, is the most dependable carrier of nostalgia . . . “

The term was newly coined in 1688 by medical student Johannes Hofer (1669-1752), a Swiss medical student for anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home, although some military doctors believed their problems were specific to the Swiss and caused by the Alpine racket of cowbells.

The word is made up of two Greek roots --- nostos (returning home) and algos (pain/longing) --- to refer to “the pain a sick person feels because he wishes to return to his native land, and fears never to see it again”. This neologism was so successful that people forgot its origin. Homesickness is often given as a synonym for nostalgia.

During this period, from the late 17th century to the late 19th century, that doctors diagnosed and treated nostalgia, it also had other names in various languages --- mal du pays (country sickness) in French, heimweh (home-pain) in German, hiraeth in Welsh, and el mal de corazón (heart-pain) in Spanish.

Cases resulting in death were known and soldiers were sometimes successfully treated by being discharged and sent home. Receiving a diagnosis was, however, generally regarded as an insult. In 1787, Robert Hamilton (1749-1830) described a case of a soldier suffering from nostalgia, who received sensitive and successful treatment.

“In the year 1781, while I lay in barracks at Tinmouth in the north of England, a recruit who had lately joined the regiment ... was returned in sick list, with a message from his captain, requesting I would take him into the hospital,” wrote Hamilton.

“He had only been a few months a soldier; was young, handsome, and well-made for the service; but a melancholy hung over his countenance, and wanes preyed on his cheeks; he complained of a universal weakness, but no fixed pain; a noise in his ears, and giddiness of his head; as there were little obvious symptoms of fever, I did not well know what to make of the case,” he added.

“Some weeks passed with little alteration . . . excepting that he was evidently become more meager; he scarcely took any nourishment . . . became indolent . . . he was put on a course of strengthening medicines; wine was allowed him; all proved ineffectual . . . he had now been in the hospital three months, and was quite emaciated, and like one in the last stage of consumption . . . on making my morning visit, and inquiring, as usual, of his rest at the nurse, she happened to mention the strong notions he had got in his head, she said, of home, and of his friends; what he was able to speak was constantly on this topic; this I had never heard of before . . . he had talked in the same style, it seems, less or more, ever since he came into the hospital; I went immediately up to him, and introduced the subject; and from the alacrity with which he resumed it . . . I found it a theme which much affected him; he asked me, with earnestness, if I would let him go home; I pointed out to him how unfit he was, from his weakness to undertake such a journey [he was a Welchman] till once he was better; but promised him, assuredly, without farther hesitation, that as soon as he was able he should have six weeks to go home; he revived at the very thought of it . . . his appetite soon mended; and I saw in less than a week, evident signs of recovery,” Hamilton described it in surgical details and accuracy.

Cases of nostalgia, which sometimes occurred as epidemics, were less frequent when the armies were victorious and more frequent when they suffered reverses.

By the 1850s, nostalgia was losing its status as a particular disease and coming to be seen rather as a symptom or stage of a pathological process. It was considered as a form of melancholia and a predisposing condition among suicides. Nostalgia was, however, still diagnosed among soldiers as late as the American Civil War.

By the 1870s interest in nostalgia as a medical category had all but vanished. Most saw the decline of this serious disease as a good thing, the result of progress.

Nonetheless, some lamented what they saw as the loss of the feelings for home that gave rise to the illness. Of course, the phenomenon of nostalgia did not disappear with its ‘demedicalization’.*