Is Catharsis Therapeutic?
The term “catharsis” originates from the Greek kathairein, ‘to purify’, and is a very old term used to refer to the purifying of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially by art. This idea found a new life in Freud’s early work which focused on assisting patients through hypnosis to ventilate unconscious sources of distress. The assumption of this “hydraulic model” was that unexpressed emotion builds up as pressure does in a boiler, causing psychological symptoms, such as hysteria or phobias, and requiring discharged (catharsis). When Freud advocated catharsis, the primary emotion he seems to have been concerned with was the sadness and distress his patients experienced in recalling their traumatic pasts. Soon he came to realize that catharsis alone was insufficient, and that his patients needed to bring into consciousness and understand (insight) the conflicts, and the urges and fears that powered them, that lay behind their distress. This therapeutic change comes no
