Was due to earlier damage to the soldiers’ ear drums and brain cells by the unremitting clanging of cowbells in the Alps. Military physicians speculated that its prevalence among Swiss mercenaries abroad Nostalgia was originally described as a “neurological disease of essentially demonic cause” by Johannes Hoffer, the Swiss doctor who coined the term in 1688. It’s not just for those away from home, and it’s not a sickness, despite its historical reputation.

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. “Nostalgia makes us a bit more human,” Dr. When people speak wistfully of the past, they typically become more optimistic 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. On cold days, or inĬold rooms, people use nostalgia to literally feel warmer. Couples feel closer and look happier when they’re sharing nostalgic memories. It makes people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders. Nostalgia has been shown to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety. Isn’t what it used to be - it’s looking a lot better. 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, includingĪ questionnaire called the Southampton Nostalgia Scale. The colleague remained skeptical, but ultimately Dr. It provided a texture to my life and gave me strength to move forward.” It made me feel good about myselfĪnd my relationships. “Nostalgia made me feel that my life had roots and continuity. “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. and he insisted to his lunch companion that he wasn’t in pain. Sedikides didn’t want to return to any home - not to Chapel Hill, not to his native Greece Mental and physical maladies to their longing to return home - nostos in Greek, and the accompanying pain, algos. 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’ His colleague, a clinical psychologist, made an immediate diagnosis. 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. SOUTHAMPTON, England - 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.

Looking good real war says nostalgia