Nostalgia Was, in Freud’s Day, an Illness Steeped in the Past. Today, It Can Be a Joyful Emotion That Reframes the Future

The late Harvard cultural theorist Svetlana Boym called nostalgia "a rebellion against the modern idea of time." And it's a dangerous emotion , says historian Agnes Arnold-Forster. In her recent book she talks about how nostalgia used to be considered an illness that could literally kill you.

Nostalgia is a cultural response to change.

Imagining the future is just another form of memory. It’s a kind of forward-looking nostalgia. “The history of utopias is the history of rear-view mirrors. Every utopia is a picture of the preceding age.”3 If your memory gets scrambled, your ability to envision a coherent future is severely hampered. When the past feels slippery or shifty, you lose... See more