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Reverend J M McHale moved from Ireland
to New York he was moving to become the
parish priest in Brooklyn
however he didn't last long in that
position but he soon contracted and died
of fatal Nostalgia newspapers covered
his final days in death and reported
that he said at one point I cannot eat
my heart is breaking and at another
point he murmured I am homesick my dear
country I will never step foot on your
green Shores again oh my mother how I
long to see you but he never saw her
again very soon lost Consciousness and
died a victim of nostalgia
his death while tragic was not singular
and across the country and indeed across
many countries
newspapers routinely carried news of
deaths by Nostalgia they often used just
that word nostalgia recently created in
the 17th century the word connoted the
acute pain and suffering people who were
far from home often experienced both the
day Nostalgia connotes a longing for a
lost time in English
in the 17th 18th 19th and into the 20th
century
it connoted a longing for a lost home
and doctors believe that long could kill
it brought with it a host of symptoms
including Rapid heartbeats fever
breathing difficulties is dysentery and
they tallied the number of people who
had perished because of nostalgia
for hundreds of years Europeans and
Americans believed that movement
was not necessarily natural certainly
not easy and that it carried with it
physical and psychological apparel that
doesn't mean people didn't move but they
did so with the knowledge that they
might be inviting risk and danger as
they migrated
attitudes about emotion and migration
have changed dramatically since then in
2004 the writer Catherine landfur
described her experience of homesickness
in New York
should recently move from Minneapolis to
Manhattan and was feeling lonely and
blue so one night to cheer herself up
she went to get a manicure
the Korean manicurist asked how she was
doing and she said I'm homesick
the manicurist herself far from home
said to her sharply quote don't be big
Baby end quote this is the modern
attitude towards homesickness on
attitude predicated on the idea that
leaving home is natural and easy and
that homesickness is a childish emotion
and a sign of weakness today adults who
suffer from homesickness are sometimes
regarded as immature and maladjusted
to feel pain and migration and to
discuss it publicly is in the words of
one psychologist quote taboo
while this view of homesickness is today
widespread it emerged only gradually
today I want to describe how this
emotion and this emotional order emerged
and why it is particularly consequential
for understanding not just the history
of emotions but the history of modern
individualism how Nostalgia and
homesickness went from deadly conditions
to rather trivial and sometimes
emotions that are seen as immature is my
subject I think it sheds a lot of light
on the history of individualism for
Central to the history Central to the
experience of individualism is the
ability to separate oneself from home
and from family from communities if only
to rejoin other communities to be fluid
to be unfettered to seek profit to seek
happiness
some observers have said that this is a
natural ability that people have and
certainly a host of commentators about
the United States have made that claim
that Americans are easy happy movers
that they've always been Restless that
they've never been tied to place or
family but the historical record
complicates that for one one examines
the history of nostalgia and
homesickness one gets a very different
perspective of mobility and
individualism and one discovers that as
people have moved
there has been a lot of ambivalence
hesitation reluctance and pain that
accompanied them
descriptions of the easy painless
mobility of people within the United
States are easy to find perhaps the most
famous comes from Alexis to tocqueville
who in the 1830s visited the United
States and then Consolidated his
thoughts in Democracy in America
there he wrote that in the United States
a man builds a house in which to spend
his old age and he sells it before the
roof is on
he plants a garden and lets it just as
the trees are coming in and coming into
bearing he settles in a place which he
soon afterward leaves to carry his
changeable longings elsewhere
Americans were able to do this he
proclaimed because there is and I quote
nothing of tradition family feeling or
example to restrain them
but our archival resources narratives
letters journals oral histories artwork
below this narrative for homesickness
family feeling were common experiences
in the United States
during the colonial period European
colonists often express yearnings for
the homes they had left behind across
the Atlantic for while many made the
voyage willingly in search of
opportunity they did so with the hope of
eventual return to their native lands
with the dream of coming back enriched a
fair number actually made it back
this has been lost from popular
narratives which often portray the
Americas as the final destination of
European colonists but that was hardly
the case for instance among Spanish
colonists historians estimate that 10 to
20 percent of all Spanish migrants
eventually returned back to Spain
sometimes after decades in the Americas
those who didn't return frequently sent
remittances home to their family letters
home and kept them in their thoughts
colonists from France likewise focused
on what they could earn in the Americas
which would enrich their lives in France
and many returned there as well
English colonists nurse similar hopes
from the early earliest days of British
colonization in North America there was
evidence that many loaned for home first
there were failed colonies but that
failed because of homesickness for
instance in 1585 English settlers
attempted to establish a colony at
Roanoke off the coast of what's now
Virginia and North Carolina they lasted
only a year and then they prevailed upon
Sir Francis Drake to sail them back to
England they were followed I should add
by another group who tried to settle the
same place and disappeared
in 1607 a group tried to settle along
the Kennebec River in Maine
and they lasted just a year before
belonging for home overtook them
essential a 17th century report
explained that quote they after a winter
stage dreaming to themselves of new
hopes at home returned back with the
first occasion
in the first successful British colony
Jamestown Virginia there were many who
found the lure of new opportunity did
not offset the pull of home
free men who came with the intention of
getting wealth in Virginia and returning
to England
often returned to England much to the
alarm of Virginia governors in fact the
Virginia courts contemplated making it
illegal to go back to England because so
many people were doing just that others
who were less free expressed their
dissatisfaction with their new home and
their longing for their old home
Richard frethorne was a teenager who was
forced to become an indentured servant
in Virginia
he was shipped from England and found
his new conditions sad and unsatisfying
in 1623 he wrote to his parents begging
them to redeem him as he said and bring
him back to England and he wrote Oh that
you did see my daily and hourly size
groans and tears and the thumps that I
affect mine own breast
I thought no head had been able to hold
so much water as hat and Duff daily flow
from mine eyes
despite his wrenching please he remained
in Virginia and by 1624 he was listed
among the colonies dead
in Massachusetts Bay the yearning for
home was so strong that one historian
has estimated that one in six Puritans
returned home
the 17th century Puritan historian
Edward Johnson reported that there was
much suffering
mental suffering among the Puritans for
in addition to be being short of food
and in uncomfortable lodgings they had
but
um
many thoughts that that distracted them
and he said that they
concentrated again and again on the fact
that quote the ditch between England and
their now place of Abode was so wide
that they could not leap over it with a
Lopes staff
of the years in Massachusetts he
described them as quote very dolorous
those who were free and had the means
often returned to England finding
um they could not overcome their
hankering desires for their homes
but there were many who were ungraved in
America indeed of the million people who
arrived in the 13 colonies between 1607
and 1789 fully two-thirds of them were
in some state of unfreedom when they
arrived either as indentured servants or
as enslaved people
the first enslaved people were brought
to Virginia in 1619 and they probably
felt homesickness more intensely and
frequently than free people for
psychologists maintain that those who
cannot control their movements
experience the feeling more than those
who can
of course the enslaved expressed many
different emotions about their
conditions including deep anger at the
Injustice of their situation deep
despair at their lack of control and
great fear about the future and the
unknown
but a recurring theme in their writings
of and about uh recruiting theme in the
writings of and about those sold away
from their families and their native
lands was the desire to return home this
was evident from the very first stage of
enslavement Thomas Phillips the captain
of the slave ship Hannibal wrote of his
captives behavior during a voyage in the
1690s he reported that the enslaved
quote are so willful and loathed to
leave their own country that they have
often leaped out of the canoes boats and
ship into the sea and kept underwater
till they were drowned to avoid being
taken up and saved by our boats he
reported that 12 of the enslaved people
he had transported to America quote did
willfully drown themselves and others
starved themselves to death for it is
their belief that when they die they
return home to their own countries and
friends again end quote
once in the America's homesickness did
not abate
in the Virginia Gazette in slavery
George Robertson offered 20 pounds for
the return of two people he enslaved
step and Lucy
he wrote neither of them can speak good
English as they have not been long in
the country they went off with several
others being persuaded they could find
the way back to their own country end
quote
the in yearnings of enslaved Africans
for their homes was intense and given
their lack of freedom to return to them
it was often incurable
while many long for homes during the
colonial period whether it was homes in
Africa from which they've been forcibly
taken or homes in Europe that they had
left willingly there was not yet one
word to describe their feelings that
began to change during the late 17th and
early 18th centuries when two new words
were introduced first Nostalgia and then
homesickness
in 1688 a Swiss scholar Johannes hoper
accorded formal medical status to the
longing for home a condition which he
claimed that medicine had up to that
point neglected
to point out the need for secular we
described the case of a man who had
traveled from Barren Switzerland to
Basel which was about 60 miles away
the man was studying in Basel
and during his time there he began to
suffer both sadness for a considerable
time
after a while he became Afflicted with
about doctors called a burning fever his
symptoms worsened with each passing day
and it appeared that he would soon die
his doctors concluded that to save him
he quote must be returned to his native
land
and although he was in their Woods half
dead by the this time they placed him on
a bed and carried him 60 miles back to
there as soon as the trip was underway
the patient was suddenly able to breathe
more freely and showed a calmer peace of
mind and as the party came closer and
closer to Barron quote all the symptoms
abated to such a great extent that they
really relaxed altogether and he was
restored to the whole sense of self
before he entered then end quote
hopefully used this incident to describe
a new medical condition
while the Germans already had the word
Hyundai and the French the phrase malade
do Pais describe the painful longing for
home Oprah claimed there was no word
within medicine to describe the feelings
and symptoms of the condition for that
reason he can graded a brand new word
using two existing Greek words nostos
meaning return home and algae meaning
pain
and he offered a medical explanation for
why people might die of this condition
his theory was this that human beings
had within their bodies what he called
The Living spirits and they were
supposed to course through the whole
body but if uh an individual became
obsessed with home all the living
spirits congregated around the idea of
home and essentially neglected their
other bodily functions leading to
fatigue weakness and possible death
offers discussion about nostalgia
became quite influential and informed
other doctors across Europe at first
people began to figure out where in
Europe Nostalgia might be they turned um
initially to Switzerland thinking it was
only a Swiss condition because that's
where hopefully found it but then people
began to diagnose cases in the French
Halloween they suggested that perhaps
the British were not
going to suffer from uh Nostalgia
because they were a nation accustomed to
commercial activity colonization but
pretty soon by the 18th century doctors
were pointing to cases within the
British Isles as well
during the 18th century as a sign of the
fact that Nostalgia was widespread and
much suffering was being experienced
because of migration another new word
entered the English lexicon and that
word was homesickness until that time
there had been no word for the the
powerful longing for home but in the
1750s the word homesickness entered
English both Nostalgia and homesickness
you know I voted to the Americans in the
late in Century
perhaps the words caught on because it
was an age of unprecedented Mobility
enabled by Enlightenment philosophies
the American Revolution and the rise of
capitalism all of these gave new prompts
for mobility and many people followed
them
for instance during the years 1800 to
1850 a higher percentage of people
crossed or refer forced across state
lines than in any other period of US
History fully 50 of people cross state
lines
the early 19th century was witness to
the market Revolution which encouraged
Restless individualism ambition
competition and in popular mythology
the icons the myths people have about
America during the 19th century
um often set settle on settlers and
wagon trains moving West gold miners
during the Gold Rush perhaps no girls
going into factories
um supposedly these people were on the
move with never a backlit glance but
archives Diaries letters reveal a far
more complicated story take for example
arculus Putnam in 1809 he left new Mills
Massachusetts where he had been working
for his brother to try his luck at his
own business he decided to open an
apothecary six miles away
Inland Massachusetts he spoke of his
departure as if he were traveling
hundreds of miles lamenting that he was
leaving quote his birthplace and his
Abode will reside my brothers sisters
and near and familiar connections he was
quote being transplanted into untried
soil word is doubtful if I shall take
root and live much more grow and
flourish
he did not last long in this morning
tutorial within eight months he was back
home once again working for his brother
another New England John Albee of
Bellingham Massachusetts was apprenticed
to his uncle who lived just one town
over
sent there to learn the trade of boot
making Alby was profoundly and happy and
he wrote quote I found myself cut off
from all the objects and persons I had
ever known
thrown into a strange world my own lost
a deadly homesick sickness had once
seized upon me of which I could not be
cured kind of depression and Melancholy
took the place of my natural deity I can
readily believe that one might die of
homesickness
his uncle to forestall his death
returned him to his mother and his
attempts to leave home or at least
temporarily delayed
women too who lived in New England were
on the move and often found Mobility to
be emotionally taxing
shimaima Sanborn born in 1798 was forced
by financial difficulties to move to
Bristol New Hampshire or sorry to leave
her Bristol New Hampshire Farm she moved
to Nashua New Hampshire
in 1843 where she said a housekeeping
for her daughters who were working in
the nearby Factory and she wrote to her
relatives saying I never
was weaned from Father's house before
I suppose I must try and bear it I am so
lonesome as you can think here among all
strangers being quote weaned from home
was trying for many in the 19th century
who had not yet learned to move without
pain who had not yet let mastered the
emotional style of modern individualism
those moving farther to the Midwest
wrong for home as well and this was
widely remarked upon it's evident in
this illustration by Walter Wilkie
called Western immigration where you can
see how unhappy migrants to the Midwest
were
enslaved people who were forced to move
when they're in slavers moved or when
they were sold testified to the
incredibly acute pain of forced
migration that they felt upon separation
from their families between 1790 and
1860 perhaps as many as 1.2 million
enslaved people were forced to migrate
from the east coast to the interior of
the American South others face migration
up and down the Southeast coast
consequently those in bondage faced a
great deal of unwelcome mobility in one
study researchers found that over the
course of 28 and a half years of a
person's life enslaved men and women in
bondage removed on average
5.4 times
slaveholders required the enslaved to be
cheerful and sunny and show no sadness
anger or resistance regardless of their
circumstances if they were homesick they
could not express the condition in front
of their enslavers without repercussions
Elizabeth keckley we called that her
enslaver colonel Burwell did not like
quote to see one of his slaves were a
sorrowful base and those who offended in
this particular way were always punished
alas the sunny face of the slave is not
always an indication of sunshine in the
heart end quote
enslaved people experienced and
expressed many emotions but a recurring
theme in the narratives of those sold
away from families was homesickness
unlike whites particularly white men who
generally left Home of Their Own Accord
in search of Greater opportunity and
often in the company of their families
the enslaved had neither the hope of a
brighter future nor the comfort of kin
to offset their homesickness
those who were sold away from their
family recalled the great pain of these
separations Charles ball who was born in
1781 in Maryland was transported to
South Carolina when he was in his early
20s of this separation he wrote quote I
was far from the place of my Nativity in
a Land of strangers with no one to care
for me beyond the care that a master
bestows upon his Ox with all my future
life one long waste Barren desert of
cheerless hopeless lifeless slavery
in other cases free blacks were enslaved
and taken away from their families this
was the case for Solomon Northup a free
man carried into slavery in 1841.
he contemplated his Bleak situation and
said quote thoughts of my family of my
wife and children continually occupied
my mind
when the Sleep overpowered me I dreamed
of them dreamed I was again in Saratoga
that I could see their faces and hear
their voices calling me Awakening from
the pleasant Phantasm of sleep
see the bitter realities around me I
could but groan and
Northup eventually regained his freedom
and rejoined his family in 1853 but less
fortunate were enslaved individuals he
met in the South such as Clem a man sold
away from his home in 18 in Washington
DC who was quote fully overcome
to him the idea of going south was
terrible in the extreme
he was leaving the friends and
associations of his youth everything
that was dear and precious to his heart
in all probability never to return
while the emotions of enslaved people
received relatively public relatively
little public attention in the Press
the emotions of a very different group
of people received a lot of attention at
the same period in history
during the late 1840s and 1850s the
California Gold Rush took off and the
homesickness of miners was widely
discussed indeed many of those who went
to California did so with the explicit
dream of returning home to their
families in the East enriched they
didn't want goals they could live rich
in California but so that they could be
prosperous householders in Boston and
Vermont
explained the plans most men had in mind
when they migrated
quote five years was the longest period
anyone expected to stay five years at
most was to be given to rifling
California of her treasures and the rich
adventurers would spend the remainder of
their days in wealth peace and
prosperity in their Eastern homes end
quote Stephen Curry of Plainfield
Connecticut certainly thought of his
plans to go to California in this way he
went to the California Gold Fields twice
only informing his wife
the second time that he had left in a
letter that he sent after he had
departed he told her quote dear Rowena
as soon as I can make a steak I will
come right home to you and we will have
a good little home for us and our
children the first thing we do
I'm going to buy a piano Forte for you
and as for ponies for blanching Grace
why you may have the choice of animals
and may pick up such ones as you would
like them to ride so he thought of his
migrations to California not as
individualistic Enterprises but instead
as something for Home and Family Once in
California such miners kept thoughts of
home with them and they were prolific
letter writers diary writers on the
subject as one Joel Brown reported um he
wrote to his family I expect that you
will think that I am crying to see my
wife well suppose I am and what then I
am not the only one that is crying to
see the wife and baby
homesick miners were certainly eager for
word from home and uh when they heard a
ship streaming into San Francisco Bay
possibly very mail they would line up
waiting for hours at just the scanned
hope that there might be a letter for
them William Taylor a Methodist Minister
reported that people would pay five
dollars to those standing in line just
so they could bump in front to get their
letters
there were other signs of homesickness
abroad in California as well for
instance this account of the first piano
in California gives a sense in 1852 the
first piano arrived in Stockton
California it was delivered to a young
woman named Mary Crowe her father was a
Methodist Minister who had gone to
um preach to the minors in California
and uh shortly after receiving it Mary
began to play the piano and her
listeners were transfixed
she wrote father had occasion to answer
a call at the front door and before
closing he accidentally looked out and
who was surprised the sidewalks and
porch were filled with old and young men
alongside of the house the scores of men
in the street as far as the eye could
see and some were sobbing on entering
the room he said quote we have an
immense congregation outside get out
your familiar Tunes Home Sweet Home Etc
he then Drew aside the curtains and
raised the windows now my children and
friends give these homesick sons and
fathers a few songs more
in fact whenever Home Sweet Home was
sung
were played it exerted a magnetical on
Miner's imagination it was the most
popular song in our all of America and
it was you played endlessly at a mining
camp 49er Enos Chrisman heard two
Mexican women playing the song on
guitars to an audience of gold miners
suddenly Assad Was Heard followed by
another and yet another and tears flowed
freely down the cheeks of the gold
diggers pieces of gold were generously
tossed into the tambourine held out to
receive them these 19th century gold
miners who have often come to symbolize
the rugged self-reliance of uh American
settlers nevertheless freely expressed
their cheerful homesickness
foreign
those who missed home did more than just
cry or listen to home sweet home many
returned throughout the 19th century the
Overland Trail saw two-way traffic
during the 1850s 25 000 miners left
California to return to their Eastern
homes along the way they often met
hundreds and sometimes thousands of
other Eastward bound Travelers leaving
places like Oregon or Washington heading
back home
despite National mythologies these men
and women on the moon were hardly rugged
individualists 19th century Americans
were willing to acknowledge and discuss
the pain of migration and were not shy
about asserting their love of Home and
Community after all according to 19th
century domestic ideology the home was
the center of virtue and morality so to
love it was a sign of one's goodness
when sensitivity one's character
Omen sickness therefore did not need to
be repressed or reflected a loyal and
upright character
this became even more apparent during
the Civil War when three million men
traveled from home to serve in the
armies with so many displaced Nostalgia
and homesickness became widespread
discussions I mean it was this in this
era particularly that Nostalgia became a
very common medical diagnosis
a few examples in October 1861 Alfred
Lewis Castleman a surgeon in the fifth
Regiment of the Wisconsin volunteers
described the first Death In His
regiment it was not from Battle he wrote
quote the poor fellow died of nostalgia
raving to the last breath about wife and
children
he continued deaths from this case are
very frequent in the army
the Civil War veteran wrote in 1866
confirming this noting quote that
Nostalgia quote fastens upon the breath
the breath the breast of its prey and
sucks vampirelike the breath of his
nostrils many a heroic Spirit after
braving death of Canon's mouth
has Atlanta succumbed unresistantly with
this vampire nostalgia
Union records offer a picture of its
consequences in all between 1861 and
1866
5537 Union Soldiers suffered from
Nostalgia so badly that they had to
visit a doctor and of those 74 died of
the condition to avoid such conditions
such outcomes
doctors and army officials stood very
seriously the need to prevent nostalgia
for instance they tried to avoid
anything that would bring a soldier's
mind back to his family and home for
that reason some units banned the
playing of home sweet home that popular
song
um uh certainly the New Hampshire
volunteer infantry did this
um but other soldiers reported that I
was a fairly commonplace experience to
not want to listen to that song because
it was so evocative of both Union
soldier Newman pneuma Barnett was forced
to listen to what he called homesick
recruits playing home sweet home and he
confided I don't like to hear it or it
makes me feel queer
just feeling sad at the sounds of a song
was bad enough but doctors worried that
if Nostalgia and homesickness spread
among the Army the soldiers would be
rendered ill and incapable of fighting
when that happened they worried about
what to do some Physicians suggested
hospitalization but if cases turned
critical they were willing to send
Soldiers Home a medical manual suggested
that in the early stages of nostalgia a
furlough would be enough to restore the
Vigor of a young Soldier so just a short
visit home but we continued when it when
Nostalgia has long resisted treatment
and gone so far as produced sensible
external lesions or structural changes
in the organs a discharge must
unquestionably be granted so soldiers
could get honorable discharges for
Nostalgia because it was a serious
condition
and people dealt with it fairly
sympathetically during the Civil War
that sympathy continued for much of the
19th century and there were many people
who gave evidence of the Nostalgia
and homesickness they were suffering for
during the period 1870 to 1920 20
million immigrants came to the United
States from across the globe
U.S nationalist historiography has long
pictured those immigrants as
individualists attracted to the nation's
opportunity and will eager to leave
their past their families their homes
their Villages their cultures behind and
never looked back but in reality most of
those who came came with the same
intention the early colonists did they
wanted to get rich in America so that
they could return the places they cared
most about enriched as an Italian
immigrant put it we brought to America
our brains and our arms our hearts
stayed on in the little houses in the
beautiful fields of Italy
such evergrey's calculated gains in the
U.S in terms of what they would buy in
their native lands
uh another Italian immigrant who
eventually returned
to his home recalled quote I dreamed of
the land I would not one day buy with my
savings land anywhere else has no value
to me
likewise a Norwegian woman who had come
to the U.S in the early 20th century who
ultimately also went back to her native
land noted an immigrant always has one
flood in each country but as hard as in
another country you never forget your
home
money in fact acted on their Nostalgia
and returned home
this has been really erased from any
contemporary and conventional narratives
about immigration but the numbers who
returned home were fairly significant
for instance during the late 19th and
early 20th century an estimated 50
percent of all Italians
uh 25 of Norwegians 17 to 27 percent of
uh residents of the austro-hungarian
Empire 46 of Greeks
10 of Irish 20 of lithuanians 30 of
polls 19 of Swedish people and 20 to
36.5 of slovakians returned home roughly
55 of Japanese immigrants in Hawaii
returned and before 1900 when there was
an uptake in ethnic and racial ethnic
and religious violence 15 to 20 percent
of Eastern European Jews returned home
as well
those who couldn't return often suffered
for years with homesickness and
Nostalgia and sometimes they suffered
all the physical symptoms sometimes it
also led to loss of life
and in some cases people perished
outright of the condition wasting away
in other cases people committed suicide
so for instance in 1901 newspapers
carried news of yadro espier a Puerto
Rican who used a double-barreled shotgun
to kill himself in San Jose California
the San Jose paper suggested that quote
Nostalgia drove lonely native to meet
awful and
both self-slane Irish girl was homesick
Katie Clark cuts her throat in our
despondency reported the Boston Sunday
journal in 1903 and a month later the
same paper reported that a Swiss
immigrant wrote homesick for the Alps
had used the same means to end his life
the Tucson citizen reported in 1907 that
quote two homesick Greeks and their
lives with gas the men had lived in
Chicago they left a suicide note one of
them about the suicide note that said
America is not as great a country as my
own
that same year newspaper readers learned
the 17 year old Hungarian bride had
swallowed Rodman and died in her
husband's arms after declaring quote she
was so lonesome and homesick but she did
not desire to live
after eight months in the U.S Cal
Abraham a 17 year old Syrian also wasted
away in 1896 the daily Charlotte
Observer reported his friends say that
he was homesick all the time and would
sometimes sit for hours thinking of home
when he took sick he had no hope nor
seemed to want to live
um these were fairly sympathetic
accounts of homesickness
um people seem to recognize the pain and
The Perils of migration but gradually by
the early 20th century that Sympathy for
the homesick began to erode for instance
some commentators suggested that
Nostalgia might actually be a good thing
for immigrants to experience for it
according to Experts of the time it
weeded out the strong from the weak
um Maurice fishberg who was a early 20th
century official with the United Hebrew
Charities wrote quote Nostalgia is the
first and most effective age the natural
selection of desirable immigrants it is
only the immigrants who are least
capable of assimilation that develop the
worst symptoms of homesickness just
insofar as the Immigrant is unable to
adjust himself to conditions of life in
America will be heavily Afflicted with
nostalgia
the Hopeless cases are eliminated by
death suicide insanity or by returning
to their native country the desirable
element is assimilated and produces good
citizens for its adopting country
in fishberg's account Nostalgia had a
social darwinian
purpose
winnowing out those unsuited for life in
America
this was symptomatic of a broader 20th
century change many came to see leaving
home as necessary for progress and for
society as a hall as a whole
not all individuals within America were
perceived by these turn of the century
writers as mentally and emotionally
equipped to leave home and the ability
to conquer homesickness came in the
early 20th century to be seen as a sign
of one's adaptability Fitness and
modernity
practitioners in the emerging field of
psychology sometimes took this social
darwinian line of thought as well
suggesting that those who could leave
home had psyches that were more
adaptable more Progressive so Linus
flying a turn of the century
psychologist wrote the lover of home is
provincial plotting and timid he is the
world's hot carrier in contrast he
celebrated the migrant who he saw as
quote Cosmopolitan with manifold
interest he said he was a person who
finds profitable objects in Kindred
Spirits in a variety of situations
flying characterize those who could
leave home as commercial speculative and
daring so these psychologists were
basically suggesting that homesickness
was a sign of backwardsness of Mal
adaptation and they questioned the
overall Fitness of those who experienced
it in doing so they repudiated past
understandings of homesickness as a
tender feeling and now conceived of it
as a hindrance to success
this perspective pointed towards the new
view of the emotion that would emerge in
the 20th century
according to these experts life demanded
change in motion
to stand still was to fall behind in the
race of life
certainly this new attitude became
evident in many places in American
culture during World world war one it
was clear that the Nostalgia diagnosis
was on the Wayne while there were were
soldiers who were diagnosed with it as
far as I've been able to find there was
only one soldier who died of nostalgia
George Arnett
um
and uh it was visible in Army newspapers
that there was a lot less Sympathy for
the condition take for instance this
headline from the Army newspaper Stars
and Stripes which proclaimed
homesickness is not rheumatism so don't
try to make the Army doctors believe it
is they said doctors were becoming quote
skeptical of all the soldiers who are
trooping in claiming to be suffering
from weakness and Elusive pains they
weren't taking the Nostalgia diagnosis
very seriously anymore
this tendency to denigrate the
attachment to home
was basically
um
spreading across American society and
um basically it was because homesickness
was becoming An Inconvenient emotion in
a modern society that required a mobile
military
a Workforce full of people willing to
change locations
um
homesickness kept people in place it was
out of sync with the demands of the
economy and so for that reason all
across American culture there became a
new emphasis on urging people to learn
to leave so psychologists like John
Watson have prominent behaviorist
psychologist in the 1920s and 1930s
suggested that overly affectionate
parents ruined their children by making
them emotionally dependent on them and
in capable of leaving home he wrote
mothers just don't know when they kiss
their children and pick them up and rock
them upon their need that they are
slowly building up a human being
totally unprepared to cope with the
world it must later live in
to make children independent he
instructed parents to do the following
never hug and kiss your children never
let them sit in your lap if you must
kiss them once on the forehead when they
say good night shake hands with them in
the morning
other psychologists advise parents to
send their children to visit relatives
in order to quote prevent a strong
emotional fixation or attachment to the
home situation or to any item in it
accompanying this advice for new
institutional forces that also pressured
Americans to leave home and do so easily
emerging corporate bureaucracies and a
growing Imperial military force required
highly mobile populations during World
War II the Army told homesick troops
that they must overcome their quote
infantile dependence on their parents
and transfer their loyalties from the
home to the military during the Cold War
Dr Edward strecker a psychiatrist at the
University of Pennsylvania proclaimed
that mothers were quote America's
greatest Menace because they kept their
sons tied to their Apron Strings and
therefore precluded them from going out
to fight to defend the nation from the
Communist threat that they were facing
during the Cold War
in the post-world War II order expanding
corporations required employees to
relocate if they hope to advance
sociologists talk at Parsons observed
for instance that um one couldn't really
be part of an extended family in the
industrial economy instead he said the
only familial tie that held up was the
conjugal tie that is marriage time which
quote interferes relatively little with
an industrial economy because a married
couple could move but they couldn't move
multi-generational families likewise
sociology is W Lloyd Warner came to
similar conclusions describing the most
useful the personality type for business
he suggested that being socially
occupationally and geographically mobile
required that individuals become
accustomed to quote adjustment
Readjustment and adjustment again and he
said to form this type of Personality
quote families cannot be too closely
attached to their Kindred extended
kinship system or they will be held to
one Asian socially and economically
maladapted in his View and that of many
others individuals need to be free at
Family Ties and emotional claims in
order to advance within the government
systems within the corporate
bureaucracies that were everywhere in
the second half of the 20th century
individual workers certainly found this
to be the case there was a common joke
during the 1960s that IBM stood for I've
been moved and they were hardly alone
for um during the 1950s for instance 20
of the U.S population moved each year
employers would penalize people if they
wouldn't agree to be moved and not
promote them
corporate capitalism required workers to
be fungible mobile and to be careful
about it these are pressures that many
Americans continue to feel both from
their employers and from a larger
culture modern psychology continues to
counsel that young people should come
through their homesickness early so for
instance the diagnostic and statistical
manual which catalogs mental disorders
talks about separation anxiety which
children feel when they are separated
from their parents and homes and it
suggests that both close-knit families
give birth to this emotion so the
suggestion is that when she loosen
Family Ties in order to make Footloose
workers
um and there are endless children's book
that likewise give this message
um Elmo and big bird
um are in stories which feature those
characters of overcoming the pain of
homesickness and learning to go and be
Mobile in society
um so there are many expectations that
modern residents of the United States
feel that they must conquer their
homesickness and they've learned that if
they can't conquer it at the very least
they shouldn't speak of it overtly for
to do so will make them look immature
and maladjusted dependent and weak and
unsuited to the demands of contemporary
life
in this they have learned the rhetoric
of individualism
yet while they will not discuss
homesickness because of all this social
pressure bearing down on them it
nevertheless is clear that many
Americans continue to feel the emotions
so they've ruined the rhetoric of
individualism but in daily life in the
practices of American life you can see
um other commitments so for instance
there are Boomerang Boomerang Kids who
return home after college as well as
those kids who never left home and have
continued to live on with their parents
there are Boomerang seniors who return
to their hometowns after
um careers elsewhere there are
immigrants who continue to return to
their native lands and within American
culture the texture the fabric of
American culture is Rife with signs of
homesickness so for instance the varied
food scene in America from Little
Italy's to chinatowns to taquerias
um those restaurants offer taste that
can at least momentarily transport
migrants back to their homes people
route from for the sports teams they
grew up with continuing to be fans from
afar they watch in their homes the
television stations they uh enjoyed in
Mumbai or
um France um the cricket games they must
keep up with the soccer games so in our
daily life there are many many signs
that homesickness still continues but
Americans by a mileage have learned to
suppress over mention of it
um
the pool of home and the power of
homesickness reflect the fact that while
Americans have long celebrated the
tenants abroad to individualism they've
learned not to speak out about their
homesickness but in their daily lives
and in their private conversations they
have affirmed a very different set of
values values that Center on family and
that affirm Community a sense of
connection and a commitment to place
so while homesickness has disappeared
from American discourse because it's
seen as an emotion of the immature it
certainly has not disappeared from in
her life
[Music]
thank you
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