Nostalgia: why we feel it and what it is for

Identified at the end of the seventeenth century, nostalgia was described as a mysterious disease that affected Swiss mercenaries fighting far from their homeland. What made them ill was above all listening to traditional music, the Canto dei Vaccai, which was used in the Alpine valleys to call cows from the pasture, but which evidently it also recalled distant and perhaps lost affections forever. The soldiers became sad and listless, they refused to eat and fight, they tried to return home, at the risk of being shot for desertion. Until the end of the nineteenth century, nostalgia was still considered a form of psychological/psychiatric disorder. Then, with the arrival of psychoanalysis and phenomenology, it was reinterpreted as a complex emotion, both pleasant and unpleasant, but not necessarily pathological.

Attempts to classify the various types of nostalgia

Andrea Stracciari and Angelo Fioritti, neurologist and psychiatrist, have dedicated a book to nostalgia (Nostalgia, Il Mulino, 2023), which also clarifies the possible interactions of this emotion with anxiety and depression. There is not just one type of nostalgia, so much so that attempts at real classifications have been made. «The most important distinction is between nostalgia as expression of a psychopathological processmost often of a depressive type, and whose main marker is the feeling of loss of the future, and nostalgia as a warm, positive feelingadaptive that allows you to connect the past to the present and project your identity into the future”, says Paolo Francesco Peloso, head of psychiatry at ASL Genova 3 and scholar of psychopathology, criminology and history of psychiatry.

«Several years ago I proposed to classify nostalgia like this: according to the objectfor example our birthplace or an important person in our life; according to timefor example childhood or adolescence; according to the report with what you are nostalgic for, which can be a pathological, depressive, obsessive or excessively idealizing relationship, or a positive relationship that allows you to keep in touch with your past, but fully experience the present”, adds Peloso.

Cognitive mechanisms

For nostalgic affection to manifest itself, autobiographical memory is necessary, i.e. the individual must be able to access a sort of continuous reconstruction of their past, which is the result of complex cognitive mechanisms. «It is a very significant type of memory from an emotional point of view that has to do with the Self in its relationship with others» says Andrea Stracciari, former medical director of Neurology and professor of Neurology and behavior at the University of Bologna .

«Explicit memory, mental imagination, language, narrative skills and emotions are involved in it. As indicated with a very effective image by two British psychologists, Martin Conway and Christopher Pleydell-Pearce, autobiographical memories could be seen as temporary and fickle dynamic constructions, well representable visually as of written sheets that fly continuously inside a ventilated container, and which change depending on the type of stimuli they continue to receive. For a long time we have known that remembering does not only consist of bringing information back to consciousness, but that it is a process that concerns complex experiences, made up of perceptions, cognitions, emotionswhich are not only brought to consciousness, but contextually reworked according to the present.”

A hinge-feeling

«In fact we do not simply remember our past», says Angelo Fioritti, former director of the Mental Health – Pathological Addictions Department of the Bologna Local Health Authority, «but we represent the experiences of the past in the present. Nostalgia is a very important “feeling hinge”., which attests to the current value of a past experience, which gives it the right to be included in the photographic gallery that constitutes our sense of Self. It is as if in our lives we continually rework this sort of personal album, removing or adding single snapshots or more often changing their order and importance. This operation doesn't always go smoothly.”

The regret

«There are particularly painful or complex experiences for which the nostalgic path is not yet practicable – explains Fioritti -. In these cases they emerge similar but profoundly different emotions like regret or remorse. «Regret brings with it the awareness of the irremediable loss of the object due to not having been able to seize an opportunity, to not having been able to adequately interpret the moment. It is an emotion that contains something similar to the mourning process and it is no coincidence that its etymology refers to crying, crying a second time for something that has been lost”, continues the expert.

«If it is often considered painful and disturbing, regret, like nostalgia, can also be seductive. Indeed fuels fantasies, which can cloak themselves in an aura of sweet and at the same time painful melancholy, almost as if the imagination could still allow the present moment to find different solutions compared to those that had been found in the past. So, despite feeling sadness, it becomes possible to lull yourself into the idea that one day one of those dreams of the past that have vanished may still come true. This is how melancholy and hope, awareness and illusion mix in regret, in a true emotional ambivalence.

«So regret, which focuses only on actions and events of the past considered significant, from a psychological point of view performs a precise function: it is a tool that helps to increase the level of one's awareness, thus limiting the possibility of making further mistakes .

Resignation and acceptance

«In this sense, regret is different from resignation and acceptance, moods deprived of the possibilities offered by hope. Finally, it should be noted that regret has the characteristic of appearing above all in specific moments of existence, when some important event creates an existential fracture. Remorse

Remorse

«Still different, but fundamentally on the same affective spectrum, is remorse, emotion in which guilt is strongly present, the awareness of having damaged the other, of having made him suffer. And it is an emotion full of suffering, which can never have the bitter-sweet nuances of nostalgia. Remorse is typically an individual emotion, which consumes the subject in his rumination, but it can also take on a collective dimension, for example the remorse of a nation for crimes committed during a war, actions for which it is certainly not possible to feel nostalgia ».

Entry and exit route to depression

«We consider nostalgia one of the possible routes to depression» says Angelo Fioritti. «And in fact those who work in mental health services know that migrations are a risk factor for the development of mental disorders, especially depression. However, nostalgia, due to its affective complexity, can represent not only a way into pathology, but also a way out.

Emotion and memory processing are the basis of almost all psychotherapeutic methods. Just think about the psychoanalytic setting, which encourages the free production of emotions and thoughts to reframe them in a positive way. Cognitive-behavioral therapies also work on the interaction between memories and emotions to be put at the service of the autobiographical reappropriation of segments of one's life that are difficult to integrate. In these contexts the appearance of nostalgic emotions can be a positive indicatorto be supported rather than repressed.”

Therapeutic resource

«Nostalgia is one therapeutic resource also in the psychological treatment of cognitive and affective disorders of neurodegenerative diseases, through nostalgic reminiscence techniques” explains Stracciari. «Already a few decades ago, the American psychiatrist Robert Butler proposed the idea of ​​stimulating autobiographical memory to induce potential therapeutic benefits on the functioning and integrity of memory, especially in old age. This “restorative” strategy consists in discussing past activities, events and experiences, especially of an autobiographical nature, with the cognitively fragile person. Recent studies, such as those by Sanda Ismail's group at the West England University of Bristol, show that nostalgic reminiscences have greater cognitive benefits than non-nostalgic memories, and this is why we talk about restorative nostalgia. This is also favored by the fact that, despite the progressive disintegration of memory and personal identity, nostalgia is preserved for a long time in people with dementia”, concludes Stracciari.

There are those who regret the Cultural Revolution in China

There is no “negative” nostalgia, since it is based on desire, which is positive by its nature. However one may feel nostalgic for past experiences which at the time they were experienced were difficult. The phenomenon has been observed in studies carried out in different countries. In the US in the 1970s it was discovered that many were trying nostalgia for the times of the Great Depressionwhen there were enormous difficulties, but precisely for this reason emotional bonds and mutual support became an important existential value.

The same phenomenon has been detected in China during the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976): everyone was forced to conform to a single lifestyle and many suffered from malnutrition and poverty, yet at the beginning of this century there was a nostalgic movement towards those years, perhaps also due to the difficulties caused by very rapid transformation of China.

And those who exploit the memory of the “good old days” to make money

There is also a business of nostalgia. By leveraging this feeling, marketing invents dance clubs, restaurants, radio stations, ways of dressing, etc remember the times when potential consumers were children, teenagers or young people. The memory of that period of life to which research attributes a higher level of happiness or mental well-being (along with, surprisingly, old age) leads to a return to consuming products from the past, such as snacks, ice cream glasses, t-shirts and shoes. The main targets of this strategy are currently: those born between 1946 and 1964 (baby boomers)whose time reference is the 60s and 70s; between 1965 and 1980 (Generation X) whose time reference is the 80s; between 1991 and 1996 (millennials)whose time reference is the 90s and which experienced the transition from analogue to digital.