1 Nostalgia: the paradoxical bittersweet

emotion
Krystine Irene Batcho

Introduction
Looking to the future is undeniably a healthy perspective that embodies the
seeds of hope for better days ahead. Scientific, technological and social progress
has contributed to an enhanced quality of life, and the anticipation of cures and
inventions reinforces a focus on the future. Amid excitement for progress, the
experience of nostalgic yearning for the past may be difficult to understand.
The roots of nostalgia’s counterintuitive nature can be traced through its history.
The physician Johannes Hofer coined the term nostalgia in 1688 to designate
homesickness a medical disease with physical symptoms (Hofer 1688/1934). Since
then, the meaning of the term nostalgia broadened to refer to yearning for the past
and the understanding of the construct was transformed from that of disease to a
universal phenomenon (Batcho 2013b). Not everyone leaves their childhood home,
but everyone recognises the irreversible passage of time and can long for the past. A
place can conceivably be returned to, but time cannot be recaptured. Nostalgia’s
darker origin raises questions about the favourable image nostalgia enjoys in con-
temporary scholarship. Has the pendulum swung too far from disease to resource
for well-being? This chapter explores how the paradoxical nature of nostalgia
allows for the emergence of discrepant views of its impact.

Elements of the paradox of nostalgia

A bittersweet emotion
Nostalgia’s emotional character may be the most compelling of its para-
doxical elements. Nostalgia entails pleasant feelings of happiness and comfort
along with feelings of sadness, longing, and loss. Nostalgia poses the puzzle of
how one can be happy and sad simultaneously. Some theorists have argued
that one valence dominates the other. Combining nostos, return to the native
land, and algos, suffering or grief, to convey the sad mood originating from
the desire to return, Hofer recognised emotional pain as inherent in nostalgia.
Building on its history, some theorists have framed nostalgia as inherently
unpleasant. Roderick M. Peters (1985:135) described nostalgia as ‘a yearning
32 Krystine Irene Batcho
the intensity of which varies from a fleeting sadness to an overwhelming
craving that persists and profoundly interferes with the individual’s attempts
to cope with his present circumstances’. Other theorists emphasised the
positive. Harvey A. Kaplan (1987:465) defined nostalgia as ‘warm feelings
about the past, a past that is imbued with happy memories, pleasures, and
joys’ and identified it as ‘a universal affect that results in a heightened mental
state, an enhancing, uplifting mood’.
The emphasis on positive versus negative affect may provide an incomplete
picture of nostalgia. The distinctive characteristic of nostalgia is its blending
of positive and negative into a unique bittersweet feeling. Pietro Castelnuovo-
Tedesco (1980) attributed the bittersweet blend to the role of conflict integral
to the longing for the past. Nostalgia is sweet, because the original event was
pleasurable, and it is bitter, because it cannot be made to come back again.
Other theorists have argued that the sweet memories elicited by nostalgia are
tinged with sadness by the recognition of the irretrievability of the past, given
that the passage of time is irreversible. Nostalgic memories, therefore, make
salient the irreplaceable loss of the longed-for sweet aspects of the past (Batcho
2007; Batcho et al. 2008). It is plausible to assume that during a nostalgic epi-
sode, pleasant memories activate positive emotions, while thoughts of irre-
trievable loss activate sadness. Jeff T. Larsen and his co-authors (2001) have
argued that in most situations people feel either happy or sad, but certain bit-
tersweet events can evoke both happy and sad feelings. They found that parti-
cipants were more likely to feel both happy and sad after viewing the poignant
film Life is Beautiful, when moving and on graduation day.
It is reasonable to imagine two emotions co-occurring. More challenging is
explaining how they exist as a single blend. Rather than feeling two separate
conflicting emotions, we experience nostalgia as a single emotion, analogous
to savouring bittersweet chocolate as a flavour in its own right. The word
bittersweet denotes the feeling of positive and negative as a unified emotion.
Larsen et al. (2001) found that students were more likely to report explicitly
the feeling of bittersweet on graduation day. Larsen and A. Peter McGraw
argued that events comprised of pleasant and unpleasant aspects can elicit
opposite-valence emotions, and that the happy and sad components of an
emotion such as bittersweet do not diminish or neutralise each other (Larsen
and McGraw 2011, 2014). It is not clear, however, when two emotions are
being felt at the same time and when they are felt as one blended emotion. It
is also not known how opposing components are combined into a unitary
emotion. Its bitter dimension raises the question of nostalgia’s appeal. Why
would we be attracted to triggers that evoke painful longing?

The past is gone but present

Nostalgia allows us to suspend temporarily the accepted properties of time.
Experiencing the past as both present and absent at the same time, we feel as
if we are in the past and in the present simultaneously. Unlike ordinary
 The paradoxical bittersweet emotion 33
memory retrieval, nostalgia imbues reminiscence with a personal engagement that
encourages identity exploration. Active involvement of identity serves to connect
past and present in intimate fashion by highlighting the intrinsic self in both.
Unlike in ordinary remembering, nostalgic yearning draws the past into the pre-
sent in an effort to diminish temporal distance. Inevitably, the longing is con-
fronted by the painful acknowledgement that the past is irretrievable, despite our
immersion in it during reverie. Like dipping our toe in the pond while remaining
on shore, nostalgia engenders the sense of being in two realities at the same time.
We enjoy the feeling of having something without having it in actuality. Ironically,
actually possessing it would invalidate it, or at least alter its inherent value
substantially. Building castles with the sofa cushions meant so much to our three-
year-old self, but would no longer have its magical quality now. Keeping it in our
‘present-past’ preserves its value while allowing us to enjoy it again.
Although trigger events have been identified, the motivation to seek or to
indulge in nostalgic is not yet clear. Understanding that nostalgia engages past
and present clarifies how it serves purposes beyond emotional regulation. As
each moment passes, we, and the world we live in, change, typically in barely
noticeable ways, but at times in dramatic fashion. Grasping part of our past
can anchor us, like clinging to a branch along the shore as we are being carried
downstream. For a time, we can appreciate how our authentic self remains
despite the constant change inherent in life. By preserving continuity amid
discontinuity, nostalgia helps us cope with the inevitable tension between the
contradictory needs to adapt and grow while maintaining an enduring self. We
are no longer three years old, and yet we are still that three-year-old.

The power to benefit or harm

The semantic evolution of the term ‘nostalgia’ reflects the paradox of the
construct. When Hofer catalogued the harmful, potentially devastating,
impacts of nostalgia, he was referring to severe homesickness. In the cases he
discussed, home still existed, along with the possibility of returning there. In
contemporary research, home has been replaced by a past that no longer
exists and cannot be returned to. In Hofer’s framework, treatment entailed
the return home or the promise of an imminent return. Once nostalgia came
to designate longing for the past, such treatment options were no longer
viable or even desirable. Furthermore, with the salient enhancement of the
quality of life generated by progress, returning to the past or remaining fix-
ated on it retained the pejorative stigma previously attached to homesickness.
Nostalgia’s valuing of the past appears to be incongruent with positive
psychology’s increased attention to the importance of personal resources such
as mindfulness and personal growth. Many positive psychologists would
assume that looking to the past inhibits mindful engagement in the present,
planning for the future and personal growth. However, evidence for the uni-
versality of nostalgia suggests that the emotion serves an adaptive purpose.
Searching to identify such an adaptive function, many contemporary theorists
34 Krystine Irene Batcho
have portrayed nostalgia as a beneficial psychological resource. It is counter-
intuitive to imagine that yearning for the past encourages one to appreciate
the present and advance toward the future. Yet, contemporary researchers
have argued that nostalgia is associated with positive impacts such as
enhanced social connectedness, healthy coping skills, optimism and altruism.
How immersion in the past can foster well-being and avoid the pitfall of
becoming trapped in the past remains to be explained.

Research: definitions, measures and tasks

The desire to reconcile contradictory theories spurred empirical research into
the purpose served by nostalgia. The evolution of the referential meaning
of the word ‘nostalgia’ posed a challenge for how it should be operationalised
for empirical investigations. Some researchers avoided explicit definitions of
nostalgia and relied on tasks that captured essential components of the con-
struct. Krystine I. Batcho (1995) incorporated the core element of missing the
past into the Nostalgia Inventory (NI) by having respondents indicate how
much they miss each of 20 items from when they were younger. Items include
concrete things such as toys and your house and abstract concepts such as not
having to worry and the way people were.
Paradoxically, the NI measure of missing the past was associated with
positive emotions and attributes. Participants who scored high on the NI
preferred activities with other people, recalled memories focused on people,
and scored higher on emotional intensity (Batcho 1998). Nostalgia-prone
participants preferred happy song lyrics, related more closely to lyrics focused
on other people, and considered others in forming their sense of self (Batcho
2007; Batcho et al. 2008). Nostalgia proneness correlated with a warm view of
the respondent’s personal past and the world when the respondent was
younger (Batcho 1995, 1998; Batcho et al. 2011; Batcho and Shikh 2016).
Nostalgia-prone individuals reported a favourable background of pleasant
childhood emotional and social behavioural experiences and were more likely
to rely on adaptive coping strategies (Batcho 2013a; Batcho et al. 2011).
People prone to nostalgia displayed favourable attributes, but the nostalgic
experience itself was bittersweet. Nostalgic song lyrics were characterised by
the irreversibility of time, irreplaceable loss, and the irretrievability of the past
(Batcho 2007; Batcho et al. 2008).
Many researchers evoked nostalgia by explicitly eliciting nostalgic and non-
nostalgic memories. The Event Reflection Task (ERT) directed participants to
think of a past event that they think about in a ‘nostalgic’ way, has personal
meaning, is an important part of their past, and makes them feel most nos-
talgic (Wildschut et al. 2006). Overall, the ERT yielded a favourable image of
nostalgic memories, and ERT-induced nostalgia was associated with heightened
social bonding, positive self-regard, positive affect, interpersonal competence
and emotional support. In later studies, researchers introduced the dictionary
definition, ‘a sentimental longing for the past’, and obtained results consistent
 The paradoxical bittersweet emotion 35
with prior studies. Induced nostalgia enhanced self-esteem, positive affect, social
connectedness and secure attachment style, and lessened attachment anxiety and
attachment avoidance (Wildschut et al. 2006, 2010). Nostalgia enhanced mean-
ing in life and countered threats to meaning (Routledge et al. 2012).
Relying on dictionary definitions assumes that they reflect popular under-
standing of the construct. The layperson’s understanding of the term ‘nos-
talgia’ was explored in studies of the prototypical structure of the construct
(Hepper et al. 2012). Central features of nostalgia included memory, remem-
bering, reminiscence, feeling, thinking and reliving. Among central features
were positively laden facets such as rose-tinted memory, fond memories,
social relationships, happiness, and childhood, as well as less positive such as
longing, missing, and wanting to return to the past. Peripheral features
included comfort, wishing, dreams, mixed feelings, change, calm, regret and
homesickness. Vignettes characterised by central features evoked greater nos-
talgia, higher positive affect, self-worth, and social connectedness. However,
peripheral vignettes contained unfavourable attributes such as detached,
lethargic, and wants to be alone, that could have injected bias against the
peripheral condition. Many participants listed both positive and negative
emotions. Erica G. Hepper et al. (2012) concluded that nostalgia involves
mixed feelings, but prototypically the ‘bitter’ is less potent than the ‘sweet’.
They argued that dictionary definitions do not include all of the features or
adequately capture the structure of nostalgia.

Nostalgia does not always elevate positive mood

The evidence on whether nostalgia is emotionally positive, negative, or bit-
tersweet is mixed. Although many studies found that nostalgia increases
positive affect (Hepper et al. 2012; Stephan et al. 2012; Wildschut et al. 2006;
Wildschut et al. 2010; Zhou et al. 2012), not all studies have found such ele-
vated emotion (Zhou et al. 2012). Elena Stephan et al. (2012) found that
nostalgic recollections increased both general positive affect and activated
negative affect, but they reduced activated positive affect and increased acti-
vated negative affect compared to positive recollections.
The unique, bittersweet signature of nostalgia was highlighted also when
evoked by music (Barrett et al. 2010). Nostalgic songs were characterised
by more positive and more mixed emotions, and both positive and nega-
tive emotions predicted music-evoked nostalgia. Negative emotions asso-
ciated with nostalgic advertising have had adverse impacts on perceived
social support and bonding with a brand (Merchant et al. 2013). Tim
Wildschut et al. (2006) found that nostalgic memories were described with
negative as well as positive emotions. Participants rated negative emotion
the most undesirable feature of nostalgia, affirming the bitter side of nos-
talgia. The acknowledged undesirability suggests that the predominance of
positive findings in many studies might reflect bias due to reluctance to
experience or express nostalgia’s unpleasant affect.
36 Krystine Irene Batcho
Timeline of nostalgia
The existing literature has focused on nostalgia as an emotion felt in the pre-
sent but inherently about the past. Recent research has suggested, however,
that the present also can be the object of nostalgia. Krystine I. Batcho and
Simran Shikh (2016) defined anticipatory nostalgia as missing aspects of the
present before they are gone, as mental time travel allows a person to imagine
the present from a vantage point in the future. Batcho and Shikh introduced
the Survey of Anticipatory Nostalgia to assess the construct, distinct
from typical personal nostalgia.
Initial studies suggested that whereas typical nostalgia was related to
remembering the past, favourable reactions, and general happiness, antici-
patory nostalgia was aligned with thinking of the future, emotional distan-
cing, difficulty enjoying the present, and a greater tendency to sadness and
worry. Proneness to personal nostalgia was associated with greater engage-
ment in current events, whereas proneness to anticipatory nostalgia was
associated with greater difficulty enjoying the present and a higher likelihood
of emotional distancing to avoid hurt when it ends. Being nostalgic for what
is still present can rob the present of pleasure by feeling it is already gone.
Whereas typical nostalgia was associated with favourable social emotional
childhood experiences, anticipatory nostalgia was associated with unfavour-
able solitary emotional childhood experiences.
Paradoxically, the desire to hold on to the present can jeopardise full
engagement in it. Envisioning what might be lost in the future can evoke the
sadness of missing the present and worry about what will come next.
The sweet facet of nostalgia often emerges while reflecting on the past, but the
bitter side might predominate when felt prematurely.
The importance of timing is evident also in assessing how nostalgic people
feel in the moment. Items such as ‘At this moment, I feel nostalgic’ can yield
ambiguous responses (Hepper et al. 2012; Wildschut et al. 2006, 2010). How
long might memory retrieval and the feelings evoked take? What would it
mean to feel ‘nostalgic’ without a target? A blended emotion, nostalgia is like
a reversible figure; you can focus on the positive or the negative in any given
moment. The emotional valence of nostalgia might begin as bittersweet, but
evolve into either positive or negative over time, depending on cognitive pro-
cessing. The affective tone researchers find will be in part a function of when
along the timeline that tone is measured.

The cognitive-emotional character of nostalgia

Different tasks and measures might account for discrepant findings by enga-
ging the affective or cognitive dimensions of nostalgia to varying degrees.
Vanessa Köneke (2010) compared results assessed with Batcho’s (1995) NI
and those with the seven-item Southampton Nostalgia Scale (SNS) (Barrett et
al. 2010). NI scores correlated with neuroticism and openness, whereas SNS
 The paradoxical bittersweet emotion 37
scores correlated with neuroticism, lamenting, openness, agreeableness, and
authoritarianism. Köneke concluded that the NI assesses personal nostalgia,
and the SNS assesses both personal and historical nostalgia by including
abstract metacognitive judgments (e.g. ‘How valuable is nostalgia for you?’).
A vague sense of ‘the past’ is different from a memory of a specific event.
Missing someone can involve fewer concrete details than retrieving auto-
biographical memories of events. One must remember one’s mother in order
to miss her, but missing her does not necessarily entail retrieving specific
events. Someone can miss their mother without thinking about when she
dropped them off on the first day of school or hosted their fifth-grade birth-
day party. The NI encompasses aspects of the past along the concrete-abstract
spectrum. Consistent with the concrete-abstract distinction, factor analysis
yielded a two-factor structure of the NI (Verplanken 2012). Illustrating the
sensitivity of the cognitive dimension of nostalgia to task demands, an
imagery ERT that engaged visualisation induced nostalgia as assessed by the
concrete, but not the abstract, items.

Beyond feeling good: the impact of nostalgia

Exploring how nostalgia feels entails capturing a glimpse of the emotion in its
active state, whereas assessing the impact of nostalgia involves tracing the effects
of having been nostalgic. Dispositional proneness to nostalgia reflects the accu-
mulated impact of nostalgic episodes over time. In the moment, being nostalgic is
not uniformly pleasant, but benefits can accrue from having had the experience.
Many of the complex benefits attributed to nostalgia have likely resulted
from cognitive processing. Not just a ‘feel good’ emotion, nostalgia can yield
higher-level effects, such as self-continuity, coping, meaning, optimism and
altruism, by engaging cognitive processing (Cheung et al. 2013; Ford and
Merchant 2010; Garrido 2018; Merchant et al. 2011, 2013; Routledge et al.
2012; Sedikides et al. 2015, 2016; Stephan et al. 2012; Stephan et al. 2014;
van Tilburg et al. 2013, 2019). Cognitive mechanisms have been identified in
the role of nostalgia in strengthening meaning in life (Routledge et al. 2012;
van Tilburg et al. 2019), and increasing volunteer service and charitable
donations (Zhou et al. 2012).
Nostalgia has been associated also with enhanced identity exploration and
authenticity (Baldwin et al. 2015; Batcho et al. 2008). By linking past and pre-
sent self-perceptions, nostalgia can help assimilate authentic aspects of self into
current self-perceptions and reinvigorate an individual’s pre-existing self-con-
cept. A bit of a Rorschach inkblot, nostalgia can reveal aspects of the nostalgic
person, as personality traits modify the impact of nostalgia on well-being. Indi-
viduals who scored high in narcissism were more likely to be nostalgic about
agentic than communal objects and to derive greater self-positivity than social
connectedness (Hart et al. 2011). Despite initially positive feelings, participants
with a strong habit of worrying subsequently experienced anxiety and depression
that emerged from negative reflection (Garrido 2018; Verplanken 2012). Bas
38 Krystine Irene Batcho
Verplanken concluded that the emotional outcome of nostalgia may depend on a
person’s dispositional view of the past.
During the transition to university, nostalgia was found to be associated
with positive beliefs and feelings when identity continuity was high, but with
negative correlates when continuity was low (Iyer and Jetten 2011). Aarti Iyer
and Jolanda Jetten argued that nostalgia is helpful when people draw upon
their past to advance present interests, but in the face of discontinuity, nos-
talgia has toxic effects and can leave someone stuck in the past. However,
over time, increased effort or assistance improved students’ perceived ability
to cope with academic demands.
Not allowing for long-term outcomes, the short timelines in research make
applications to real life difficult. Initial impacts of nostalgia can be transformed
as a result of actions in the real world. During adverse times, nostalgic memories
might encourage someone to seek support from those who had loved them in the
past, or from people in the present who play similar roles. Memories can revive
or help rehabilitate a relationship. Outcomes may rely upon other people and
circumstances and take time commiserate with the severity of the problem.
Consequently, complementary methods are needed to explore nostalgia’s bene-
fits over longer time spans than are possible in laboratory designs.

Nostalgia in daily life

Arguing that the ERT suffers from positive reminiscence bias by eliciting extra-
ordinary experiences, David B. Newman and his colleagues analysed daily diary
data and ratings solicited at random times during the day from undergraduates
to provide representative samples of nostalgia in daily life (Newman et al. in
press). They critiqued existing measures of nostalgia as biased or focused too
narrowly. To assess nostalgia in ecologically valid settings, they developed the
four-item Personal Inventory of Nostalgic Experiences (PINE) that directs
respondents to rate the extent to which they feel sentimental and wistful toward
the past and long to return to a former time in life.
Nostalgia assessed with PINE was associated with more negative traits than
was nostalgia measured with the SNS. Newman et al. reported that results
from their naturalistic studies: ‘diverged from experimental findings by showing
that nostalgia is a mixed emotion, although more strongly associated with
negative feelings than positive feelings’ (Newman et al. in press). On days the
students felt nostalgic, they reported greater active and deactivated negative
affect, loneliness, regret, rumination, reflection, searching for meaning, and
lower life satisfaction and self-esteem. Students were more likely to feel
depressed and sad when feeling nostalgic, and yesterday’s nostalgia led to feel-
ing sad and depressed the next day. In contrast with prior research, Newman et
al.’s results suggested that nostalgia has mostly negative effects on well-being.
Newman et al. attributed prior findings of positive impacts on well-being to
the approach-oriented wording of the SNS and the positive memories elicited
by biased instructions. In daily life, nostalgia was less intense and less helpful.
 The paradoxical bittersweet emotion 39
They concluded that seeking nostalgia is different from feeling nostalgic.
Deliberately reflecting on nostalgic moments may be beneficial, but involun-
tary nostalgia evoked by situational cues may be predominantly negative.
The intensive repeated measures employed by Newman et al. can them-
selves alter the intended naturalistic experience and may not be well suited to
a wide range of samples or settings. Narrative accounts such as interviews,
diaries, and memoirs offer a complementary source of naturalistic material
for qualitative analysis. Previous research suggested that nostalgia would
function as a psychological resource for immigrants coping with acculturative
stress and integrating into their new culture (Sedikides et al. 2009). Nostalgia
would facilitate integration by enhancing positive affect, self-regard, meaning,
self-continuity, relational bonds and social support. However, it is not known
how context might modify the role played by nostalgia. Immigrants who
migrate voluntarily might experience an adaptive form of nostalgia, whereas
refugees who have suffered forced migration might experience a pathological
form of nostalgia, fuelled by intense longing for their lost past.
Narrative analysis of survivors’ memoirs explored the role of nostalgia in
inspiring and sustaining the resistance in Ukraine during World War II and in
coping with post-war displacement (Batcho 2018). Nostalgia strengthened
cultural identity, social bonds, attachment to home, and continuity of self.
Nostalgic memories counteracted loneliness and supported coping during and
after the struggle. The memoirs suggest that nostalgia may serve different
functions along a timeline from the onset of an adverse event through the
ability to thrive after overcoming the immediate challenges. Nostalgia
strengthened commitment to the cause and the resolve to overcome extreme
hardship. The later realisation that the cause had been lost was accompanied
by prolonged depression exacerbated by exile.
During the aftermath, nostalgia revealed its paradoxical potential to advance
or inhibit recovery. A source of psychological strength during adversity, nos-
talgia was not a uniformly healthy resource during the early period of accul-
turation. Initially, the hope of returning home inhibited acceptance of the new
culture. Outweighing the ephemeral happiness of positive memories, nostalgia
intensified sadness by sharpening the sense of no longer belonging. The more
deeply embedded their past world was in their sense of self, the greater was their
feeling that they would lose part of who they are by fitting into a new culture.
One resister recounted: ‘I refused to sink my roots into the new soil and adapt to
the new circumstances in which I found myself. I fell into a deep depression, and
life stopped having meaning for me’ (Pyskir 2001:227). Another described his
belief that closing off the past to fit into his new culture would be an admission
that he no longer loved all that had been his prior life. That belief fuelled his
depression and served as an obstacle to forging new relationships (Mac 2009).
Helpful during transitory adversity, in situations with no clear end, pro-
longed nostalgia can become counterproductive. However, the memoirs
revealed how nostalgia led the resisters in exile to confront the forced changes
in their lives. In contrast with Iyer’s and Jetten’s (2011) findings, it was the
40 Krystine Irene Batcho
confrontation with discontinuity that encouraged identity exploration and
enabled the resisters to move on. Over time, nostalgia helped the resisters
understand who they had become in their new home and how their intrinsic
self had endured. In some cases, resolution took years to accomplish.
Memoirs are limited by bias, forgetting, and other distortions of memory.
Confidence in Batcho’s (2018) qualitative analysis was bolstered by parallel
findings in a memoir constructed from journal entries written during the
struggle by Luba Komar (2009), a member of the resistance in World War II
Ukraine who escaped after arrest, torture, and sentencing. Incorporating
contemporaneous material, Komar’s memoir was less vulnerable to the inac-
curacies of memory.
Facing exile, Komar recounted the importance of home. Upon departure,
Komar reacted: ‘I yearn for all that is dear to me my home and my native
land’ (Komar 2009:82). Not unique to Komar, this yearning was for more
than the people left behind. Risking brutal punishment:

Each one of us surreptitiously bends down and quickly grabs a handful of

earth – our own, our native soil – to hold on to during the journey into a
foreign land. As if it were a priceless treasure, we kiss this soil, wrap it in
a handkerchief and hide it close to our hearts.
(Komar 2009:89)

Bringing part of the past into the present, souvenirs and mementos resurrect
what is no longer. By reminding one of a loved one who has died or of
childhood innocence long gone, a keepsake is imbued with a reality beyond
itself. A link to the past, the clump of native soil countered the discontinuity
imposed by exile by anchoring identity until conflicts of cultural belonging
could be dealt with effectively.
In extreme circumstances, nostalgia reduced negative affect rather than
elevating positive affect: ‘Now with my good-byes completed, I feel I’ve set-
tled all my affairs in my thoughts and my conscience. I feel like I’ve written
the last paragraph in the book of my life here on earth’ (Komar 2009:71). In
the face of imminent death, nostalgia provided calm, rather than the opti-
mism of typical nostalgia.

Pathological nostalgia
Most contemporary psychologists view nostalgia as predominantly beneficial,
but some theorists have postulated pathological degrees or forms of the
otherwise healthy emotion. In recent refugees with no prior psychiatric his-
tory, Alexander V. Zinchenko (2011) reported symptoms of a malignant form
of nostalgia, characterised by repetitive reconstructions of bittersweet memories
rather than the creative reconstruction of past experiences. By keeping them
connected to their past, these involuntary reminiscences were obstacles to
healthy adaptation to their present reality and threatened their psychological
 The paradoxical bittersweet emotion 41
well-being. Other theorists described nostalgia as pathological when it involves
a refusal to accept a loss (Bassin 1993; Kaplan 1987; Sohn 1983).
Rather than revealing a separate pathological form of nostalgia, the overall
pattern of existing research suggests that nostalgia can be healthy or unheal-
thy as a function of life stage, personality, prior experiences or context. Like a
multi-use tool, nostalgia may respond to an individual’s current need. When
continuity of self is threatened, nostalgia strengthens identity, when mortality
is salient, nostalgia enhances meaning, and when displaced from home, nos-
talgia preserves one’s past for incorporation into the present. Depression is
countered with elevated mood, hopelessness with optimism, and loneliness
with connectedness and belonging.

Understanding the paradoxical nature of nostalgia

Discrepant research findings reflect nostalgia’s bittersweet valence. The
evidence is not uniform for a dominance of either positive or negative
affect. The simultaneous experience of opposing emotions is not common
(Larsen et al. 2014). Therefore, bittersweet nostalgia is atypical of emo-
tional experience. During a nostalgic episode, it is plausible that pleasant
memories activate positive emotions, while thoughts of irretrievable loss
activate sadness. However, activation of sweet and bitter as separate emo-
tions does not explain feeling a single bittersweet emotion.
It is not clear how two emotions are blended to be felt as a single emo-
tion. The blending of bitter and sweet may occur in response to triggers that
comprise conflicting elements in inherently inseparable composite stimuli.
The pleasantness of a nostalgic memory is inseparable from the painful
longing for its loss. One yearns nostalgically for what is simultaneously
pleasant and lost.
Longing for the past to come forward in reminiscence allows enjoyment in
the present without retreat to the past. The present-past provides relief from
current concerns and worries. By providing reassurance that the past is pre-
served in memory, nostalgia facilitates willing release of the past, relegating it
to await retrieval when desired or needed without the encumbrance of reality.
The knowledge that nostalgia can serve us upon command sustains a sense of
control over the past. That feeling of control may help explain the finding
that seeking nostalgia is associated with benefits, in contrast with unfavour-
able impacts of nostalgia triggered spontaneously.
Paradoxically, nostalgia has had a longstanding reputation as unhealthy,
but also as universal. In conditions of threat to cultural autonomy or eco-
nomic viability, nostalgia was valued for the attachment to home and
allegiance to ethnic or national identity it fosters. An understanding of the
cognitive dynamics in nostalgia elucidates the paradox of an emotion that can
be helpful or detrimental. Many research participants have been young adults.
The threshold of independence constitutes a context ripe in potential and
conducive to optimism. The sad farewell to the past occurs within the
42 Krystine Irene Batcho
optimistic framework of anticipating a promising future. Hopeful anticipation
might well colour the appraisal of the nostalgic farewell to the past. In such
contexts, the past is left behind a bit reluctantly, but the sadness of farewell is
outweighed by the excitement of future joy.
The demands of ordinary life make deliberate nostalgia a luxury to be
indulged in when time and schedule allow. Memories solicited in the lab
are influenced by instructions, but in everyday life, events recalled depend
upon circumstances, mood, or needs. Unlike sought-after nostalgia, nos-
talgia triggered spontaneously is more likely to exert negative impacts. In
natural settings, the negative side of nostalgia may prevent a person from
becoming trapped in dwelling on the past. If nostalgia were solely a feel-
good emotion, a person might remain in the comfort of the remembered
past, but nostalgia is self-corrective. Despite the joy of remembrance, the
sadness or pain of loss propels a person to abandon reverie and return to
the challenges of the present. In adverse situations with ‘light at the end
of the tunnel’, nostalgia preserves identity and social connectedness for a
better future. When adversity is perceived as meaningful, nostalgia sus-
tains a sense of purpose, self-worth, and the desire to leave a legacy for
the future.
Contradictory findings have accrued from efforts to capture an elusive
experience, multifaceted and shifting over time. Like trying to describe a but-
terfly in motion, you might catch the moment its wings are spread out in
flight or upright as it alights on a blossom. Findings depend upon the extent
to which research examines the emotional experience or impacts resulting
from cognitive processing. Much of the laboratory research has examined the
aftermath of having been nostalgic rather than the experience of being nos-
talgic itself. That aftermath can dissipate or intensify over time depending
upon how it is processed and the events that happen next.
Efforts to resolve paradoxical findings have raised the possibility of mala-
daptive nostalgia. Would excessive nostalgia be a function of the intensity of
the feeling or the frequency of indulging in it? Current research suggests it is
more apt to identify pathological nostalgia in terms of cognitive appraisal. A
happy family session of reminiscing about childhood adventures or mis-
adventures (e.g. how little Suzie gave the dog a haircut) reflects and strength-
ens family connectedness. By contrast, for a person displaced or estranged
from friends and family and yearning for loved ones and togetherness, nos-
talgia might exacerbate an isolating effect of reverie. Enjoying something
alone is not the same as sharing the pleasure with others.
Extraordinary circumstances illuminate the qualities and limits of nos-
talgia’s power. Qualitative analyses of narratives have highlighted the seduc-
tive dynamics of nostalgia that can be a resource and a hindrance. Nostalgia
serves different purposes over the course of surviving, healing, and embracing
the future. By maintaining self and community identity, belonging, and
meaning, nostalgia can provide comfort and support in the midst of trau-
matic change, isolation, and threats to mortality.
 The paradoxical bittersweet emotion 43
In the aftermath of the urgent need to survive, the role of nostalgia is more
complex. During times of great personal and cultural disruption, nostalgia
can coexist with depression and mourning loss of the past. In cases of forced
migration, nostalgia can be an almost unbearable grief for the loss of all a
person has known and loved – places, customs, social bonds, and especially
loved ones. How such nostalgic longing can be transformed into healthy
coping is a critical question as yet unresolved. Qualitative studies suggest that
nostalgia has the potential to reinvigorate a person on the path to recovery,
growth and psychological well-being. Integration of past into present enables
the individual to embrace the present and future without renouncing the
meaning of the past. Memoirs by survivors in their advanced age have illu-
strated how the impact of nostalgia can unfold over a lifetime.

Conclusion
As this chapter has shown, conflicting findings have yielded incomplete por-
traits of nostalgia and obscured its fuller essence. A useful understanding of
nostalgia rests upon recognising it as a cognitive-emotional experience with a
mixed-affect signature that unfolds over time. Within a temporal window,
however brief, there can be pangs of grief and feelings that oscillate between
pleasant and painful, akin to the rapidly changing perceptions while viewing
a reversible stimulus. The point along the timeline when impacts are assessed
can tilt findings toward the positive or negative.
Nostalgia is sensitive to measures and methods derived from differing con-
ceptual definitions. Longing emphasises what has been lost and what is
missed. While longing can be experienced on a continuum from mild to
intense, the qualifier sentimental places it toward the mild end of the spectrum
and lends the emotion a positive tone. Instructions often elicited ‘nostalgic’ or
‘non-nostalgic’ memories. Classifying everything that is not nostalgic within
one category fails to control numerous attributes. Unlike the nostalgic cate-
gory that narrows the scope to positive material, ‘everything else’ can include
anything from pleasant through neutral to horrible.
The content of memories should not be conflated with the emotion felt
during reminiscence. We do not always want to have the past again now or to
return to it. Reminiscing about childhood antics does not mean wishing we
were children again. Such memories engender the joyful recognition that we
are happy we had those experiences. We are glad that those events and people
are part of our past – and part of who we are now. By contrast, reminiscing
about visits with Mom after she has died evokes feelings of loss along with
the love we felt, and we wish those visits could continue.
The juxtaposition of sweet remembrance and bitter longing for what can no
longer be accounts for nostalgia’s inherent paradoxical character. Over time,
dispositional traits and contextual variables can direct nostalgic processing to
develop the sweet or the bitter to effect adaptive or maladaptive impacts.
Ideally, nostalgia enhances use of the positive from the past for benefit in the
44 Krystine Irene Batcho
present. Scrutinising nostalgia within the intricacies of life requires coordi-
nated complementary approaches – qualitative and quantitative, experimental
and ecological. Convergent findings will make applications more meaningful.
Harnessing the most adaptive attributes of nostalgia’s power demands recog-
nition of its bittersweet nature. Viewing a butterfly up close as it feeds on a
blossom is pleasurable, but trapping it there would mean never appreciating
the true essence of the butterfly as it manifests its total beauty in flight.

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