Nostalgia

Not many people are aware that this was originally a medical term. Its root is a word coined from the Greek words nostons (homecoming) and aglos (pain) at the end of the 17th century by Swiss physician j. Hofer as a general term for the emotional distress from an illness with symptoms of mental breakdown in people who have left their homeland. It has evolved from a medical term into today's word that expresses emotion. It is generally defined as an emotion of remembering and missing one's homeland. Today&sbquo its meaning related to time in the past&sbquo especially as a term to ex-press emotion of remembering one's infancy&sbquo has become more prominent than space&sbquo or homeland&sbquo as in such phrases as "deprivation of homeland&sbquo" but we may say that nostalgia is linked with a spatial image on the time axis. According to sociologist F. Davis&sbquo nostalgia secures and reinforces the continuity of your identity when your identity is in jeopardy&sbquo He further defines that the situation in which nostalgic sense permeates through people as if it covered the society or age&sbquo as collective nostalgia&sbquo and says that this collective nostalgia relieves critical trends in society o~ the age like a safety valve. This&sbquo for example means that the nostalgia of people who cannot keep up with the social densification of information&sbquo plays a compensatory role against drastic and unilateral social changes. !n design and artistic expression intended to convey nostalgia&sbquo regardless of whether they are modern or postmodern&sbquo nostalgic expressions and expressions in-tended to convey nostalgia or which deal with the subject of nostalgia are possible. In that sense&sbquo nostalgia has already transcended the medical term or the word that merely expresses emotions&sbquo and its meaning has gained considerable depth&sbquo Its re-definition as a design concept term is called for and its implication in design is vital.

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