Nostalgia: A Lost Place for the Reviviscence of the Primary Object—A Contribution to the Psychoanalytic Study of Some Clinical Aspects of Nostalgia

In its attempt to revive the past, the nostalgic illusion tries to re-establish the relationship with the primary object, avoiding, in this way, the mourning of separation from it. Through two clinical cases, different aspects of nostalgia could be defined. One of these aspects is described as the subject's endeavor to take a drive revenge against a past that "won't go away": here, nostalgia acquires a compulsive character and comes as a response to early anxieties concerning the subject's existence itself, reflecting deficits of primary narcissism, and thus an affinity with an unreachable ideal ego. On the contrary, nostalgia in its more evolved forms, since it is associated with the ego ideal, preserves-in a sacralized way-the bond with the object, to which the subject appears devoted and loyal, and comes as a defense against the re-emergence of the polymorphously perverse infantile sexuality.