Varieties of Nostalgia*

Nostalgia is not a mental disease but it may develop into a monomaniacal, obsessive mental state causing intense unhappiness and leading to a complete uprooting of a settled existence.

It usually manifests itself in an intense desire to return to the country or town from where we came, or—on more acute analysis—to return to the home which we had left behind. Motives of frustration and a desire to escape from reality are clearly discernible behind it but do not exhaust its syndrome.

It was commonly observed before the last great war with immigrants who became violently homesick during their first few years in the United States and could not be cured until after a visit to their country of origin. The cure was costly but usually complete.

After the last great war one would have thought that those who have escaped from the Nazi, Fascist or a communist terror would never develop a longing for a home or town that no longer existed or for a country in which cherished conditions of life had totally changed. Nevertheless, not even the victims of concentration camps were entirely free from attacks of nostalgia. I know of some who still attempt to return and face ruination, and of others who had committed suicide because they could not go back.

Assuredly, this is a phenomenon worthy of psychological investigation. Why does an old country, often of wretched and beggarly existence, become a fairy land to the victims of nostalgia? What is the spell which binds them and achieves the miraculous transformation of sordid and depressing memories into glowing fantasies?

The simplest answer is that behind the love of the old country or home the yearning for our childhood is hidden and that the victim of nostalgia is a mentally regressive compulsive neurotic. This view explains many features of the nostalgic obsession but I do not find it sufficiently penetrating. I discern signs of a deeper enchantment, the spell of immemorial utopian fantasies combined.

The word “utopia” means “no such plac