Today, we think of nostalgia as a pleasurable state of being. But in the 19th century, it was considered a terminal condition. During the American civil war, doctors scribbled the word on dozens of death certificates
The Future of Nostalgia
- 作者：Boym, Svetlana
- 出版社：Perseus Books Group
- 出版日期：2002年
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Combining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Svetlana Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities-St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague-and the imagined homelands of exiles-Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstahm, and Brodsky. From Jurassic Park to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes.
Synopsis:
What happens to Old World memories in a New World order? Svetlana Boym opens up a new avenue of inquiry: the study of nostalgia.
About the Author
Svetlana Boym is a writer and Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard. She is the author of Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia and Death in Quotation Marks: Cultural Myths of the Modern Poet, as well as of short stories, plays, and a novel. She is a native of St. Petersburg, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
怀旧的未来
译者: 杨德友
出版社:译林出版社
出版年: 2010-10
内容简介 · · · · · ·
简介：
本书从多角度考察了怀旧这种社会现象。第一部从波德莱尔的意 象、本雅明的“历史的天使”讲到好莱坞的恐龙和虚拟空间，追述怀旧从十七世纪的“疑病”演变为不可医治的现代症状的历史。第二部着眼于城市和后共产主义的 记忆，描写莫斯科、圣彼得堡和柏林的变迁以及东西欧的关系。第三部写流亡者想象中的家园，包括移民美国的俄国作家纳博科夫、诗人布罗茨基、艺术家卡巴科夫 等。各种形式的怀旧反映出多元意识形态与文化传统之间、社会与个人之间的复杂碰撞。作者提出主要有两类怀旧：修复型的怀旧试图超历史地重建失去的家园；反 思型怀旧则关注人类怀想和归属的模糊涵义，不避讳现代性的种种矛盾。
本书从多角度考察了怀旧这种社会现象。第一部从波德莱尔的意 象、本雅明的“历史的天使”讲到好莱坞的恐龙和虚拟空间，追述怀旧从十七世纪的“疑病”演变为不可医治的现代症状的历史。第二部着眼于城市和后共产主义的 记忆，描写莫斯科、圣彼得堡和柏林的变迁以及东西欧的关系。第三部写流亡者想象中的家园，包括移民美国的俄国作家纳博科夫、诗人布罗茨基、艺术家卡巴科夫 等。各种形式的怀旧反映出多元意识形态与文化传统之间、社会与个人之间的复杂碰撞。作者提出主要有两类怀旧：修复型的怀旧试图超历史地重建失去的家园；反 思型怀旧则关注人类怀想和归属的模糊涵义，不避讳现代性的种种矛盾。
作者简介 · · · · · ·
作者简介：
斯维特兰娜·博伊姆（1959— ） 出生于前苏联列宁 格勒，1988年在哈佛大学获得博士学位，现任哈佛大学斯拉夫文学与比较文学教授，也是传媒艺术家和作家。主要著作有：《俄国日常生活神话 学》（1994）、《怀旧的未来》（2001）、《尼诺奇卡》（小说，2003）等。
导读：
博伊姆剖析了各种形式的怀旧——民族主义的、大流散的、流亡的、文学的、个人的；这种精彩、机智、讽喻、透彻的剖析深深触动人心。以冷静而温柔的目光透视当今日常生存方式，这是一部独一无二的作品。
——玛乔丽·帕洛夫
研究现代文化的人士，若想了解一个日益依赖于全球化超空间的社会为何又是怀旧泛滥的社会，此书是再好不过的参考。
——《书单》杂志
斯维特兰娜·博伊姆（1959— ） 出生于前苏联列宁 格勒，1988年在哈佛大学获得博士学位，现任哈佛大学斯拉夫文学与比较文学教授，也是传媒艺术家和作家。主要著作有：《俄国日常生活神话 学》（1994）、《怀旧的未来》（2001）、《尼诺奇卡》（小说，2003）等。
导读：
博伊姆剖析了各种形式的怀旧——民族主义的、大流散的、流亡的、文学的、个人的；这种精彩、机智、讽喻、透彻的剖析深深触动人心。以冷静而温柔的目光透视当今日常生存方式，这是一部独一无二的作品。
——玛乔丽·帕洛夫
研究现代文化的人士，若想了解一个日益依赖于全球化超空间的社会为何又是怀旧泛滥的社会，此书是再好不过的参考。
——《书单》杂志
目录 · · · · · ·
目 录致 谢…………………………………………………………………………………………………
导言：忌讳怀旧吗？…………………………………………………………………………………
第一部 心灵的疑病：怀旧、历史与记忆…………………………………………………………
第一章 从治愈的士兵到无法医治的浪漫派：怀旧与进步…………………………………
第二章 历史的天使：怀旧与现代性…………………………………………………………
第三章 恐龙：怀旧与通俗文化………………………………………………………………
第四章 修复型怀旧：密谋与返回本源………………………………………………………
第五章 反思型怀旧：虚拟现实与集体记忆…………………………………………………
第六章 怀旧与后共产主义记忆………………………………………………………………
第二部 城市与重新发明的传统……………………………………………………………………
第七章 大城市的考古学………………………………………………………………………
第八章 莫斯科，俄国的罗马…………………………………………………………………
第九章 圣彼得堡，世界性的外省……………………………………………………………
第十章 柏林，虚拟的首都……………………………………………………………………
第十一章 欧洲的爱欲…………………………………………………………………………
第三部 流亡者与想象中的故乡……………………………………………………………………
第十二章 大流散的亲密关系…………………………………………………………………
第十三章 纳博科夫的虚假护照………………………………………………………………
第十四章 布罗茨基的一间半房屋……………………………………………………………
第十五章 卡巴科夫的卫生间…………………………………………………………………
第十六章 移民的纪念品………………………………………………………………………
第十七章 审美个人主义与怀旧伦理学………………………………………………………
结论：怀旧与全球文化：从外层空间到网络空间…………………………………………………
注 释…………………………………………………………………………………………………
索 引…………………………………………………………………………………………………
译后记………
心理健康
研究發現，懷舊有益身心健康
2013年08月06日
搬到英國南安普頓大學之後(University of Southampton)不久的一天，康斯坦丁·斯蒂基特(Constantine Sedikides)和一個心理學系的同事共進午餐，討論他最近一些不同尋常的感覺：每周里總有那麼些時間，他會突然被懷舊之情所擊中，想念他之前在美國 北卡羅來納州立大學(University of North Carolina)的家、老朋友、大學著名的Tar Heel籃球隊的比賽、炸秋葵，還有教堂山城中秋天甜美的氣息。
斯蒂基特的同事是一位臨床心理學家。他迅速給斯蒂基特做了 個診斷：一定是抑鬱症。還有什麼其他原因會讓你沉浸在過去呢？自從17世紀的瑞士醫生髮明「懷舊」這個單詞以來，懷舊一直被認為是一種心理紊亂。這位瑞士 醫生將士兵們的精神與身體疾病都歸咎於他們急切回家的心理，這在希臘語中被稱為nostos——「懷舊」的英文單詞nostagia (sic )的前半部分詞根。而後 半部分詞根的algos，則意為「隨之而來的痛苦」。 此段翻譯大有問題
His colleague, a clinical psychologist, made an immediate diagnosis. He must be depressed. Why else live in the past? Nostalgia had been considered a disorder ever since the term was coined by a 17th-century Swiss physician who attributed soldiers’ mental and physical maladies to their longing to return home — nostos in Greek, and the accompanying pain, algos.
Origin:
late 18th century (in the sense 'acute homesickness'): modern Latin (translating German Heimweh'homesickness'), from Greek nostos'return home' + algos'pain'
- 檢視大圖
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Jasper James/Getty Images
但斯蒂基特博士並不想回家——至少不是美國教堂山的家，也不是他的老家希臘。他堅持己見，告訴他的同事：他並沒有痛苦的感覺。
「我告訴他我是一個向前看的人。有時我確實忍不住會懷念過往，但這是有好處的。」他說，「懷舊讓我覺得生活有根源與連續性。它讓我喜歡自己和身邊的人，將我的生活歷程編織理順，給我前進的勇氣。」
他的同事還是表示懷疑，但最終斯蒂基特博士贏得了辯論。1999年的這頓午餐給予他啟發，使他開創了一個新領域。他在其社會心理學實驗室里研製了一套工具，包括一個叫「南安普頓懷舊量表」的調查問卷，如今世界上許多研究者依然在使用這些工具進行研究。經過十餘年的研究後，懷舊已經不像人們當年所想的那樣糟糕，它的形象變得好多了。
從研究結果看來，懷舊可以減少孤獨、無聊與焦慮。它讓人們對陌生人更加慷慨，對外人更加容忍。當夫妻們擁有共同的懷舊記憶，他們會感覺更親密快樂。在寒冷的房間里，懷舊會使人們感覺溫暖。
懷舊確實也有痛苦的一面。這是一個苦中帶甜的體驗，但將利弊權衡來看，懷舊依然能讓生活顯得更加有意義，讓死亡感覺不那麼可怕。當人們無限依戀地談論着過往時，他們通常會對未來更加樂觀與富有信心。
「懷舊使我們更人性。」斯蒂基特博士說。他認為第一個偉大 的懷舊者是奧德修斯（Odysseus，《荷馬史詩》中的希臘伊卡島王，流浪十年終回故土與親人團聚——譯註），曾用親人與家庭的回憶以支撐他度過痛苦的 歲月。但斯蒂基特博士強調，懷舊並不等同於思鄉病，它並不只作用於離家的遊子。即使其歷史聲譽不良，懷舊也不是一種病。
約翰森·賀佛爾(Johannes Hoffer)，那個最初在1688年發明「懷舊」單詞的瑞士醫生，將它定義為「可導致器質惡性疾病的神經系統疾病」。軍隊醫生們猜測，派駐外國的瑞士僱 傭兵中無比流行的懷舊病，是因為他們的耳膜與腦細胞有過早期損傷。受傷的來源則是阿爾卑斯山上永不停息的聲聲牛鈴叮噹。
同樣的感受
19到20世紀時，懷舊曾被歸於「移民精神疾病」、「抑鬱症中的一種」、」腦部壓抑強迫症」等各種疾病里。但當南安普頓大學的斯蒂基特博士、提姆·維爾德舒特(Tim Wildschut)與其他心理學家開始研究懷舊後，他們發現這在世界範圍內是一個很正常的現象，甚至年幼如7歲的孩子們，就已經有懷舊現象（他們會愉快地懷念生日與假期）。
「英國對懷舊特徵的定義，和在非洲與南美是相同的。」維爾德舒特說。它們擁有共同的主題，如對朋友家人、假期、婚禮、歌曲、落日、湖泊等的懷念。每個故事裡都傾向將自己定義為主角，有親密朋友環繞四周。
大部分人稱每周內至少會經歷一次懷舊感受，而幾乎一半人每周會有3至4次懷舊體驗。研究者們將「懷舊」與「思鄉」加以區別，懷舊情緒通常由消極事件與孤獨感受喚起。但人們說，懷舊能幫助他們情緒變好。
南安普頓的研究者們也在實驗室里測試了這些影響。他們讓人們閱讀一篇描述致命事故的文章，另外用性格測試找出那些有極度孤獨情緒的受試者。果不其然，那些為事故受害者傷心的人與害怕孤獨的人們，相比而言更容易沾染上懷舊情緒。而懷舊確實有所作用：他們會感覺並不那麼抑鬱與孤單了。
但這些懷舊的體驗並不只有積極的一面。我們的回憶里並不全 是笑聲。而回憶帶給我們的歡樂中，也總摻雜着若有所失的悵惘。但總體而言，懷舊的益處還是大大超越其害處。南安普頓的研究者們進行了系統分析，他們在實驗 室中採集數據，還分析了一本叫《懷舊》(Nostalgia)的雜誌中刊登的故事，得到這一結論。
「懷舊的故事通常有很不好的開頭，一般都帶着一些問題，但它們總能有個好的結局，因為有親近的人給予你幫助，」斯蒂基特博士說，「所以你能以一種強烈的歸屬感結束懷舊體驗，而會對他人更寬容慷慨。」
音樂可以很快引發懷舊，於是它成為研究者們最喜歡的工具。在荷蘭蒂爾堡大學(Tilburg University)的一個實驗里，研究者文格霍特(Ad J. J. M. Vingerhoets)與其同事發現，聽音樂不僅可以讓人懷舊，還能感覺到身體更溫暖。
在中國南方的中山大學裡，周欣悅仔細探索了這種溫暖效應。她和她的同事花了一個月時間追蹤記錄學生們，結果發現在寒冷天氣里，這種懷舊情緒更為常見。研究者們也發現，當人們呆在20度的涼爽房間里時，他們比呆在暖和房間里更容易懷舊。
在實驗中，並不是所有呆在涼爽房間里的人都會懷舊，但那些懷舊的人確實表示感覺更溫暖了。斯蒂基特博士說，這個心理與身體的聯繫表示，也許早在奧德修斯之前，懷舊已經對我們的祖先產生進化上的意義。
「如果回憶可以至少讓你自我感覺身體舒適，這都會是一種神奇並複雜的環境適應，」他說，「它讓你可以堅持更長時間以尋覓食物與庇護，這有助於生存。」
尋找甜蜜的時刻
當然，回憶也可能讓人絕望。20世紀七八十年代的研究者們認為，懷舊可以惡化「自我中斷」(self-discontinuity)這種疾病。史蒂芬·史提斯（Stephen Stills，美國歌手——譯註）在《組曲：朱迪藍色的眼睛》(Suite: Judy Blue Eyes)中準確地描述了這個問題：「不要讓過去來提醒我們現在已不再如此。」這種悵然所失與情緒錯位經常與身體或腦部疾病相聯繫。
但根據新近研究結果，這種自我中斷的感覺並不一定是懷舊體驗的結果。事實上，根據南安普頓懷舊量表問卷，如果人們增加懷舊頻率，他們會傾向於擁有一種更健康的自我中斷情緒。為了了解記憶令人欣慰的原因，北達科他州州立大學(North Dakota State University)的克雷·羅德里奇(Clay Routledge)與其他心理學家在英國、荷蘭與美國成人中進行了一系列實驗。
在實驗中，部分受試者先聽了一些過去的流行歌曲，並讀了一些他們所喜愛歌曲的歌詞，使他們產生懷舊情緒。相比起對照組，這些受試者更可能感覺「被愛」與「生活有意義」。
接着，這些研究者嘗試喚起受試者的焦慮，以測試懷舊在另一 個極端的作用。他們讓部分受試者閱讀一篇由所謂牛津哲學家寫作的文章，文章里講述因為個人對世界的作用「微不足道、悲慘與無意義」，生活只是虛無。結果表 明，文章的讀者們更容易產生懷舊情緒，這也許是為了驅趕這種薩特(Sartre)式的絕望。
另外，如果這些被試者的懷舊情緒被喚起後，再來閱讀這篇討論人生荒涼的文章時，他們比較不容易被作者說服。至少對接受實驗的英國學生們而言，在記憶隧道中流連體驗能讓他們認識到生活的價值。（這是否能對憂鬱的法國文人起作用則有待分解。）
「懷舊對於存在感至為關鍵，」斯蒂基特博士說，「它喚起了珍貴的記憶，讓我們相信個人的價值，覺得我們擁有有意義的生活。我們的一些研究表明，那些經常沉入懷舊情緒的人更能面對死亡這一概念。」
在記憶銀行里儲存
懷舊的效果似乎取決於年齡。這是英國薩里大學(University of Surrey)心理學家愛麗克·何派(Erica Hepper)的研究結果。她和同事發現，年輕人的懷舊程度相對較高，中年人程度偏低，而老年人則又重新回到較高的懷舊程度中。
「懷舊可以幫助我們面對生活的轉折期。」何派博士說，「當年輕人剛剛搬離家鄉，開始他們第一份工作時，他們會沉浸於聖誕節家庭團聚、寵物和學校朋友的回憶里。」
斯蒂基特博士現在54歲了，他依然很享受對美國教堂山城的懷舊，雖然他的懷舊範圍已經在過去十年中被大大擴展了。他說，多年的研究給予他一些啟發，以增加自己生活中的懷舊對象，其中一項是：創造更多值得回憶的時光。
「我不願意錯過任何機會，以製造值得懷舊的記憶。」他說，「我們管這個叫可預期的懷舊，我們甚至已經開始這個相關研究了。」斯蒂基特博士從研究中還得到了另一個啟發。
當他需要讓自己快樂起來，或者需要一些心理激勵時，他便從其「懷舊儲備」中汲取能量。在這樣的時刻里，他會試着讓自己專註於回憶，細細品嘗往事，而不去將它們與其他事情做對比。
「許多其他人，」他解釋道，「將懷舊定義為用往事與現狀對 比，然後自我暗示地認為過去的生活更美好，感嘆着『那些年』。」但對於大多數人而言，這都不是最好的懷舊方法。比如當老年人在養老院里對比現狀與過往，這 並無法讓他們覺得未來無限美好。但如果他們將往事看成一種人生存在的方式，思考『我的生活意味着什麼？』，他們則可能從懷舊中獲益。
這種不做對比的懷舊已經作為研究的一部分，用於一年級本科生，以測試人們在不同情況下時懷舊的作用。其他實驗則採用相同的方法，用以測試養老院中的老人、剛從癌症手術中恢復的婦女與監獄的囚犯。
有沒有完全無法陷入懷舊的人呢？有的，相比起渴望親近的人，那些對親密關係持懷疑態度的人便在懷舊中收穫較少，他們在心理學術語中被稱為「迴避型人格」。當然也有神經病患者會過分沉浸於懷舊之中。然而對大部分人而言，斯蒂基特博士建議我們可以對此做有規律的練習。
如果你沒有神經機能病，也沒有迴避型人格，我覺得如果你一周懷舊兩到三次，會對你有幫助。」他說：「將懷舊的體驗作為一種珍貴的經歷，亨弗萊·鮑嘉(Humphrey Bogart)說：『我們會永遠擁有巴黎』（電影《卡薩布蘭卡》的經典台詞——譯註）時，懷舊便是我們的『巴黎』。我們擁有這些記憶，沒有人能將它們奪去。這是我們的無價之寶。」
本文最初發表於2013年7月9日。翻譯：陳復加、亦加
What Is Nostalgia Good For? Quite a Bit, Research Shows
August 06, 2013
Not long after moving to the University of Southampton, Constantine Sedikides had lunch with a colleague in the psychology department and described some unusual symptoms he’d been feeling. A few times a week, he was suddenly hit with nostalgia for his previous home at the University of North Carolina: memories of old friends, Tar Heel basketball games, fried okra, the sweet smells of autumn in Chapel Hill.
His colleague, a clinical psychologist, made an immediate diagnosis. He must be depressed. Why else live in the past? Nostalgia had been considered a disorder ever since the term was coined by a 17th-century Swiss physician who attributed soldiers’ mental and physical maladies to their longing to return home — nostos in Greek, and the accompanying pain, algos.
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But Dr. Sedikides didn’t want to return to any home — not to Chapel Hill, not to his native Greece — and he insisted to his lunch companion that he wasn’t in pain.
“I told him I did live my life forward, but sometimes I couldn’t help thinking about the past, and it was rewarding,” he says. “Nostalgia made me feel that my life had roots and continuity. It made me feel good about myself and my relationships. It provided a texture to my life and gave me strength to move forward.”
The colleague remained skeptical, but ultimately Dr. Sedikides prevailed. That lunch in 1999 inspired him to pioneer a field that today includes dozens of researchers around the world using tools developed at his social-psychology laboratory, including a questionnaire called the Southampton Nostalgia Scale. After a decade of study, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be — it’s looking a lot better.
Nostalgia has been shown to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety. It makes people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders. Couples feel closer and look happier when they’re sharing nostalgic memories. On cold days, or in cold rooms, people use nostalgia to literally feel warmer.
Nostalgia does have its painful side — it’s a bittersweet emotion — but the net effect is to make life seem more meaningful and death less frightening. When people speak wistfully of the past, they typically become more optimistic and inspired about the future.
“Nostalgia makes us a bit more human,” Dr. Sedikides says. He considers the first great nostalgist to be Odysseus, an itinerant who used memories of his family and home to get through hard times, but Dr. Sedikides emphasizes that nostalgia is not the same as homesickness. It’s not just for those away from home, and it’s not a sickness, despite its historical reputation.
Nostalgia was originally described as a “neurological disease of essentially demonic cause” by Johannes Hoffer, the Swiss doctor who coined the term in 1688. Military physicians speculated that its prevalence among Swiss mercenaries abroad was due to earlier damage to the soldiers’ ear drums and brain cells by the unremitting clanging of cowbells in the Alps.
A Universal Feeling
In the 19th and 20th centuries nostalgia was variously classified as an “immigrant psychosis,” a form of “melancholia” and a “mentally repressive compulsive disorder” among other pathologies. But when Dr. Sedikides, Tim Wildschut and other psychologists at Southampton began studying nostalgia, they found it to be common around the world, including in children as young as 7 (who look back fondly on birthdays and vacations).
“The defining features of nostalgia in England are also the defining features in Africa and South America,” Dr. Wildschut says. The topics are universal — reminiscences about friends and family members, holidays, weddings, songs, sunsets, lakes. The stories tend to feature the self as the protagonist surrounded by close friends.
Most people report experiencing nostalgia at least once a week, and nearly half experience it three or four times a week. These reported bouts are often touched off by negative events and feelings of loneliness, but people say the “nostalgizing” — researchers distinguish it from reminiscing — helps them feel better.
To test these effects in the laboratory, researchers at Southampton induced negative moods by having people read about a deadly disaster and take a personality test that supposedly revealed them to be exceptionally lonely. Sure enough, the people depressed about the disaster victims or worried about being lonely became more likely to wax nostalgic. And the strategy worked: They subsequently felt less depressed and less lonely.
Nostalgic stories aren’t simple exercises in cheeriness, though. The memories aren’t all happy, and even the joys are mixed with a wistful sense of loss. But on the whole, the positive elements greatly outnumber the negative elements, as the Southampton researchers found by methodically analyzing stories collected in the laboratory as well as in a magazine named Nostalgia.
“Nostalgic stories often start badly, with some kind of problem, but then they tend to end well, thanks to help from someone close to you,” Dr. Sedikides says. “So you end up with a stronger feeling of belonging and affiliation, and you become more generous toward others.”
A quick way to induce nostalgia is through music, which has become a favorite tool of researchers. In an experiment in the Netherlands, Ad J. J. M. Vingerhoets of Tilburg University and colleagues found that listening to songs made people feel not only nostalgic but also warmer physically.
That warm glow was investigated in southern China by Xinyue Zhou of Sun Yat-Sen University. By tracking students over the course of a month, she and colleagues found that feelings of nostalgia were more common on cold days. The researchers also found that people in a cool room (68 degrees Fahrenheit) were more likely to nostalgize than people in warmer rooms.
Not everyone in the cool room turned nostalgic during the experiment, but the ones who did reported feeling warmer. That mind-body link, Dr. Wildschut says, means that nostalgia might have had evolutionary value to our ancestors long before Odysseus.
“If you can recruit a memory to maintain physiological comfort, at least subjectively, that could be an amazing and complex adaptation,” he says. “It could contribute to survival by making you look for food and shelter that much longer.”
Finding a Sweet Spot
Of course, memories can also be depressing. Some researchers in the 1970s and ’80s suggested that nostalgia could worsen a problem that psychologists call self-discontinuity, which is nicely defined in “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” by Stephen Stills: “Don’t let the past remind us of what we are not now.” This sense of loss and dislocation has repeatedly been linked to both physical and mental ills.
But the feeling of discontinuity doesn’t seem to be a typical result of nostalgia, according to recent studies. In fact, people tend to have a healthier sense of self-continuity if they nostalgize more frequently, as measured on the scale developed at Southampton. To understand why these memories seem reassuring, Clay Routledge of North Dakota State University and other psychologists conducted a series of experiments with English, Dutch and American adults.
First, the experimenters induced nostalgia by playing hit songs from the past for some people and letting them read lyrics to their favorite songs. Afterward, these people were more likely than a control group to say that they felt “loved” and that “life is worth living.”
Then the researchers tested the effect in the other direction by trying to induce existential angst. They subjected some people to an essay by a supposed Oxford philosopher who wrote that life is meaningless because any single person’s contribution to the world is “paltry, pathetic and pointless.” Readers of the essay became more likely to nostalgize, presumably to ward off Sartrean despair.
Moreover, when some people were induced to nostalgia before reading the bleak essay, they were less likely to be convinced by it. The brief stroll down memory lane apparently made life seem worthwhile, at least to the English students in that experiment. (Whether it would work with gloomy French intellectuals remains to be determined.)
“Nostalgia serves a crucial existential function,” Dr. Routledge says. “It brings to mind cherished experiences that assure us we are valued people who have meaningful lives. Some of our research shows that people who regularly engage in nostalgia are better at coping with concerns about death.”
Feeding the Memory Bank
The usefulness of nostalgia seems to vary with age, according to Erica Hepper, a psychologist at the University of Surrey in England. She and her colleagues have found that nostalgia levels tend to be high among young adults, then dip in middle age and rise again during old age.
“Nostalgia helps us deal with transitions,” Dr. Hepper says. “The young adults are just moving away from home and or starting their first jobs, so they fall back on memories of family Christmases, pets and friends in school.”
Dr. Sedikides, now 54, still enjoys nostalgizing about Chapel Hill, although his range has expanded greatly over the past decade. He says that the years of research have inspired strategies for increasing nostalgia in his own life. One is to create more moments that will be memorable.
“I don’t miss an opportunity to build nostalgic-to-be memories,” he says. “We call this anticipatory nostalgia and have even started a line of relevant research.”
Another strategy is to draw on his “nostalgic repository” when he needs a psychological lift or some extra motivation. At such moments, he tries to focus on the memories and savor them without comparing them with anything else.
“Many other people,” he explains, “have defined nostalgia as comparing the past with the present and saying, implicitly, that the past was better — ‘Those were the days.’ But that may not be the best way for most people to nostalgize. The comparison will not benefit, say, the elderly in a nursing home who don’t see their future as bright. But if they focus on the past in an existential way — ‘What has my life meant?’ — then they can potentially benefit.”
This comparison-free nostalgizing is being taught to first-year college students as part of a study testing its value for people in difficult situations. Other experiments are using the same technique in people in nursing homes, women recovering from cancer surgery, and prison inmates.
Is there anyone who shouldn’t be indulging in nostalgia? People who are leery of intimate relationships — “avoidant,” in psychological jargon — seem to reap relatively small benefits from nostalgia compared with people who crave closeness. And there are undoubtedly neurotics who overdo it. But for most others, Dr. Sedikides recommends regular exercises.
“If you’re not neurotic or avoidant, I think you’ll benefit by nostalgizing two or maybe three times a week,” he says. “Experience it as a prized possession. When Humphrey Bogart says, ‘We’ll always have Paris,’ that’s nostalgia for you. We have it, and nobody can take it away from us. It’s our diamond.”