Memories Through the Lens of Songs

Written by: Hannalyn Ng (23-E3)

Designed by: Loo Hao Zhe (23-U2)

Imagine visiting the therapist and being told that your mental condition should be treated by “inciting pain and terror”. These were the exact words by French doctor Jourdan Le Cointe during a time when nostalgia was considered a psychological disorder. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, doctors thought of nostalgia as a fatal disease, one that warranted “cures” such as leeches, public ridicule, bullying and being buried alive. Why else would one choose to live in the past, a memory long gone, rather than being in the present? Believed to be linked to depression at its core, 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 and 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. 

Yet, Constantine Sedikides, an academic who was Greek by birth, found the thought of his past memories a profoundly grounding experience of some kind, not only helping him to make sense of his life’s journey, but also helping him to feel optimistic about the future. Starting from him, further research into the effects of nostalgia blossomed. 

Now proven to be a universal feeling, nostalgia is shown to be both a driver of empathy and social connectedness, and a potent internal antidote for loneliness and alienation. This has led to the beginnings of nostalgia-based therapies for illnesses that include clinical depression and even Alzheimer’s, a disease for which no cure has been found yet. Sedikides talks of nostalgia as the “perfect internal politician, connecting the past with the present, pointing optimistically to the future” and a mental state “absolutely central to human experience”.

While nostalgia could be a feeling evoked from seeing a childhood photograph or remembering a time spent with loved ones in the past, it is not just experiences from past or previous relationships that can make us feel sentimental. Things like music, movies and TV shows can all trigger the feeling in us, and nostalgia in the media has appeared in many forms over the last few years. A bunch of Disney films made decades ago, Mulan, Beauty and the Beast, etc, have been remade into live action films, with The Little Mermaid released just this year. For audiences, it’s an opportunity to look back at stories associated with their childhood, but with a more contemporary and inclusive look. 

Music, also a key driver of nostalgia, packs up all those feelings from a time in the past and delivers them to the listener in a span of three minutes or less. This is an experience shared by everyone: hear a piece of music from decades later and you are transported back to that particular moment, like stepping into a time machine. We can feel everything as if we are actually there. It is much more than just being able to remember all the lyrics to a song we have not heard in years, but rather, the strong emotions that our subconscious mind could have linked to a certain moment we look back upon with longing. They often come from particular times in our lives, be it from our childhood, a time when we were experiencing hardship, or an enjoyable and unforgettable memory. 

Music evokes emotion, but the sound and feeling of it, while important, does not necessarily define our feelings. A sad song could be associated with a happy time, a happy song with a sad time. Cretien van Campen, author of The Proust Effect: The Senses as Doorways to Lost Memories, said that “Music memories are often shared with peers.” We listen, together. At a party, it is something that we hear whilst dancing or chatting to a friend. We go to concerts or gigs with one another. And it is because music is there as part of lives spent with others – often significant others – that helps make it especially meaningful.

This powerful relationship between music and memory is owed to a type of long-term memory, known as implicit memory; one that deals with the subconscious part of our minds. Classical conditioning is also where an event, an emotion, and a song get connected. When a piece of music is paired with a very emotional event, it can thus be an effective cue to bring back the strong emotion that was felt at that moment. Perhaps this is indicative of the complex pictures of our lives that music helps to viscerally underscore, and thus the effect has also been coined by researchers as “the reminiscence bump”. 

Fuelled by the discovery that nostalgia can be a restorative emotion that allows us to give our lives meaning, research has been done on using music as a form of therapy for certain groups of people, like the elderly who suffer from Alzheimer’s, or others with traumatic brain injuries. These groups of people are often those who might have problems with memory. Despite profound memory loss and even a loss of knowledge about who they are, individuals with dementia often show a remarkable memory for music. Research shows that self-selected music can trigger positive memories they might otherwise struggle to recall. Music can therefore help bring back some of those special moments of their lives that they have forgotten, or help retrieve vivid non-musical memories by listening to music they heard when they were young. 

Additionally, music can also be used as a form of therapy for those suffering with their mental health, such as those with depression. It can assist people to recall difficult parts of their lives that were not necessarily as bad as they had thought. Psychologists note that “People who are depressed often feel as if there is a blanket over their lives”. Hearing music, and remembering various experiences, “can help them remember the more complex experiences.” “It’s not that these are always positive, but they may be more rounded.” Therefore, music cannot cure, but perhaps, it can help heal.

All in all, whether used as a form of escapism, a source of comfort looking back, or a way to root us in our own journey of self-discovery looking forward, nostalgia is a feeling that does more for us than we think. And as for me, perhaps I would always like to stay the girl who retreats into somewhere safe in my mind from time to time to look back upon past times spent with loved ones, a way to remind myself of all the good things that have been, are, and will be.