ABSTRACT
One of several important ways that popular commercial culture (which includes all cultural production aimed at making a profi t) accomplishes the collective behavior its purveyors aim to inspire is by tapping into the power of memory. The cultural impact of nostalgia-the memory of and desire for a lost Eden-is considerable, and it’s particularly prominent in the image of the surfer. In psychoanalytic terms, we’re all shaped fundamentally by a sense of paradise lost because our most primal memories involve the total connection between self and other, between inside and outside, that characterizes the original, oceanic feeling. Whether it’s the experience of connection and gratifi cation that characterizes the womb, or the baby nursing at the breast, or even a phylogenetic, cellular memory of early life forms in the ocean, what is original to the personality is the oceanic feeling of connection and plenitude. Unconsciously, we all continue to be driven by this memory, this desire to return to what is symbolized so powerfully by the ocean.
