Nostalgia is a psychic condition that occupies a position somewhere between mourning, depression and melancholy, with which it is sometimes bound up. Defined from early times as the sickness of exile, nostalgia is a pharmakon, both balm and poison for the person who indulges in it. Working on the writings of survivor of the Shoah Jean Améry, and his own experience with survivors of the Rwanda genocide, the author, a psychoanalyst, here distinguishes two stances when confronting nostalgia: the nostalgic position and avoidance, both at the origin of pathological conditions that can lead to melancholy, and even suicide. © ERES.

Bereavement Exile Depression melancholy Survivor Nostalgia Rwanda Améry

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