Catharsis or katharsis is from the Ancient Greek word , , meaning 'purification' or 'cleansing', commonly used to refer to the purification and purgation of thoughts and emotions by way of expressing them. The desired result is an emotional state of renewal and restoration.
In dramaturgy, the term usually refers to arousing negative emotion in an audience, who subsequently expels it, making them feel happier.
In Greek the term originally had only a physical meaning, describing purification practices. In medicine, it can still refer to the evacuation of the catamenia ('monthlies', menstrual fluid). Similarly, a cathartic is a substance that accelerates the defecation of faeces.
The first recorded uses of the term in a mental sense were by Aristotle in the Politics and Poetics, comparing the effects of music and tragedy on the mind of a spectator to the effect of catharsis on the body.Aristotle, Poetics, 1449b
The term is also used in Greek to refer to the spiritual purging process that occurs in the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. Greek Neoplatonists also used the term to refer to spiritual purification.
In psychology, the term is associated with Freudian psychoanalysis where it relates to the expression of buried trauma (the cause of a neurosis), bringing it into consciousness and releasing it, increasing happiness.
Purification ritual The term (, 'to purify') and its relatives appear in the work of Homer, referring to purification rituals. The words and (, 'pure') became common in Greek. It is thought that they are derived from the Semitic word qatar ('to fumigate').. In another sense, it's a cognate of Arabic "qaṭar: قطر" meaning to distill; with the noun form meaning 'drop or drip'.
, a later epic set in the Trojan War cycle, narrates the purification of Achilles after his murder of Thersites.
Later, the Greeks took certain new measures to cleanse away blood-guilt—"blood is purified through blood", a process in the development of Hellenistic culture in which the oracle of Delphi took a prominent role. The classic example—Orestes—belongs to tragedy, but the procedure given by Aeschylus is ancient: the blood of a sacrificed piglet is allowed to wash over the blood-polluted man, and running water washes away the blood.Burkert notes parallels with a bilingual Akkadian-Sumerian ritual text: "the knowledgeable specialist, the sacrificial piglet, slaughter, contact with blood, and the subsequent cleansing with water" . The identical ritual is represented, Burkert informs us, on a found at Canicattini, wherein it is shown being employed to cure the daughters of Proetus from their madness, caused by some ritual transgression.
To the question of whether the ritual obtains atonement for the subject, or just healing, Burkert answers: "To raise the question is to see the irrelevance of this distinction".
Platonism
In Platonism, catharsis is part of the soul's progressive ascent to knowledge. It is a means to go beyond the senses and embrace the pure world of the intelligible.Reale, Giovanni, (1990) History of Ancient Philosophy, vols. 5, trans. by John R. Catan, Albany: State University of New York Press, vol II, pp. 166–167 Specifically for the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry, catharsis is the elimination of passions. This leads to a clear distinction in the virtues. In the second tractate of the first Ennead, Plotinus lays out the difference between the civic virtues and the cathartic virtues and explains that the civic, or political, virtues are inferior. They are a principle of order and beauty and concern material existence. (Enneads, I,2,2) Although they maintain a trace of the Absolute Good, they do not lead to the unification of the soul with the divinity. As Porphyry makes clear, their function is to moderate individual passions and allow for peaceful coexistence with others. (Sentences, XXXIX) The purificatory, or cathartic, virtues are a condition for assimilation to the divinity. They separate the soul from the sensible, from everything that is not its true self, enabling it to contemplate the Mind (Nous).Smith, Andrew, (2004) Philosophy in Late Antiquity, London and New York, Routledge, pp. 62–64
Passive psychological Catharsis is a term used in dramatic art that describes a particular effect of a performance on its audience.
The first recorded use of the term being used in the mental sense was by Aristotle in his work Politics, regarding the use of music:
In his treatise on poetry, Poetics, he describes the relief brought about by a staged tragedy:
Purgation or purification? In his works prior to the Poetics, Aristotle had usually used the term catharsis purely in its literal medical sense (usually referring to the evacuation of the katamenia—the menstrual fluid or other reproductive material) from the patient. F. L. Lucas opposes, therefore, the use of words like purification and cleansing to translate catharsis; he proposes that it should rather be rendered as purgation. "It is the human soul that is purged of its excessive passions."Lucas, F. L. (1927) Tragedy in Relation to Aristotle's Poetics, p. 24
Gerald F. Else made the following argument against the "purgation" theory:
Lessing (1729–1781) sidesteps the medical attribution. He interprets catharsis as a purification (), an experience that brings pity and fear into their proper balance: "In real life", he explained, "men are sometimes too much addicted to pity or fear, sometimes too little; tragedy brings them back to a virtuous and happy mean."Lucas, F. L. Tragedy in Relation to Aristotle's Poetics, p. 23. Hogarth, 1928 Tragedy is then a corrective; through watching tragedy, the audience learns how to feel these emotions at proper levels.
G. F. Else argues that traditional, widely held interpretations of catharsis as "purification" or "purgation" have no basis in the text of the Poetics, but are derived from the use of catharsis in other Aristotelian and non-Aristotelian contexts. For this reason, a number of diverse interpretations of the meaning of this term have arisen. The term is often discussed along with Aristotle's concept of anagnorisis.
Elizabeth Belfiore held an alternate view of catharsis as an allopathic process in which pity and fear produce a catharsis of emotions unlike pity and fear, which she described in her book, Tragic Pleasures: Aristotle on Plot and Emotion.
Intellectual clarification In the twentieth century a paradigm shift took place in the interpretation of catharsis: a number of scholars contributed to the argument in support of the intellectual clarification concept.For example: L. Golden, Aristotle on Tragic and Comic Mimesis, Atlanta, 1992; S. Halliwell, Aristotle's Poetics, London, 1986; D. Keesey, "On Some Recent Interpretations of Catharsis", The Classical World, (1979) 72.4, 193–205. The clarification theory of catharsis would be fully consistent, as other interpretations are not, with Aristotle's argument in chapter 4 of the Poetics (1448b4-17) that the essential pleasure of mimesis is the intellectual pleasure of "learning and inference".
It is generally understood that Aristotle's theory of mimesis and catharsis represent responses to Plato's negative view of artistic mimesis on an audience. Plato argued that the most common forms of artistic mimesis were designed to evoke from an audience powerful emotions such as pity, fear, and ridicule which override the rational control that defines the highest level of our humanity and lead us to wallow unacceptably in the overindulgence of emotion and passion. Aristotle's concept of catharsis, in all of the major senses attributed to it, contradicts Plato's view by providing a mechanism that generates the rational control of irrational emotions. Most scholars consider all of the commonly held interpretations of catharsis, purgation, purification, and clarification to represent a process in which pity and fear accomplish the catharsis of emotions like themselves.
D. W. Lucas, in an authoritative edition of the Poetics, comprehensively covers the various nuances inherent in the meaning of the term in an Appendix devoted to "Pity, Fear, and Katharsis". Lucas recognizes the possibility of catharsis bearing some aspect of the meaning of "purification, purgation, and 'intellectual clarification,'" although his approach to these terms differs in some ways from that of other influential scholars. In particular, Lucas's interpretation is based on "the Greek doctrine of Humours", which has not received wide subsequent acceptance. The conception of catharsis in terms of purgation and purification remains in wide use today, as it has for centuries. However, since the twentieth century, the interpretation of catharsis as "intellectual clarification" has gained recognition in describing the effect of catharsis on members of the audience.
Attempts to avoid passive catharsis There have been, for political or aesthetic reasons, deliberate attempts made to subvert the effect of catharsis in theatre.
For example, Bertolt Brecht viewed catharsis as a pap (pabulum) for the bourgeois theatre audience, and designed dramas which left significant emotions unresolved, intending to force social action upon the audience. Brecht then identified the concept of catharsis with the notion of identification of the spectator, meaning a complete adhesion of the viewer to the dramatic actions and characters. Brecht reasoned that the absence of a cathartic resolution would require the audience to take political action in the real world, in order to fill the emotional gap they had experienced vicariously. This technique can be seen as early as his agit-prop play The Measures Taken, and is mostly the source of his invention of an epic theatre, based on a distancing effect (Verfremdungseffekt) between the viewer and the representation or portrayal of characters.Brecht, Bertold, , in Valentin, Jean-Marie, ed., , Paris: Éditions de L'Arche, 1999, pp. 69–70.
Brazilian dramatist Augusto Boal, inventor of the Theater of the Oppressed, which seeks to eliminate the distinction between spectator and actor, also considers this kind of catharsis "something very harmful". "In me, too, and in everyone else, there is the power to change. I want to release and develop these skills. The bourgeois theater oppresses them."Henry Thorau (1989), Interview with Augusto Boal, in: . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, p. 159.
Active and conversational psychological
Psychoanalysis Jakob Bernays was a German philosopher who wrote books about Aristotle's views of drama in 1857 and 1880. These prompted a lot of writing about catharsis in the German-speaking world.
In this environment, Austrian psychiatrist Josef Breuer developed a cathartic method of treatment using hypnosis for persons who have intensive hysteria in the early 1890s. While under hypnosis, Breuer's patients were able to recall traumatic experiences, and through the process of expressing the original emotions that had been repressed and forgotten (and had formed neuroses), they were relieved of their neurotic hysteria symptoms. Breuer became a mentor to fellow Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud (who was married to Bernays' niece). Breuer and Freud released the book Studies on Hysteria in 1895. This book explained the cathartic method to the world, and was the first published work about psychoanalysis.
As Freud developed psychoanalysis, catharsis remained a central part of it. After trying hypnotherapy and finding it wanting, Freud replaced it with free association.
The term cathexis has also been adopted by modern psychotherapy, particularly Freudian psychoanalysis, to describe the act of experiencing the deep emotions associated with events in the individual's past which had originally been repressed or ignored, and had never been adequately addressed or experienced.
Psychodrama