Long considered a disorder, nostalgia is now recognised as a powerful tool in the battle against anxiety and depression. Tim Adams meets the researchers proving that looking back improves the look of tomorrowIs it healthy to dwell in the past? Up until about 15 years ago most psychologists would have suggested probably not. The habit of living in memory rather than the present, of comparing how things once were with how things are now, was for several centuries thought at best a trait to avoid and at worst a root cause of depressive illness. Nostalgia was the soldiers malady a state of mind that made life in the here and now a debilitating process of yearning for that which had been lost: rose-tinted peace, happiness, loved ones. It had been considered a psychological disorder ever since the term was coined by a 17th-century Swiss army physician who attributed the fragile mental and physical health of some troops to their longing to return home nostos in Greek, and algos, the pain that attended thoughts of it. Since the turn of this century, however, things have been looking up for nostalgia. Continue reading...
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