Glossary // Glossary term Historical
Catharsis
From the Greek for cleansing; Aristotle used it for what tragedy achieves through pity and fear, and commentators have read it as purgation, purification or clarification. Breuer and Freud turned it into a clinical method of emotional discharge, and empirical psychology turned it into a testable claim that expressing an emotion reduces it. On this site catharsis means a subjectively felt release of emotional tension after expression, exertion or immersion, without any assumption that the cause of the tension has changed. A short history of the concept of catharsis from Aristotle's Poetics through Breuer and Freud's cathartic method to empirical research on emotional expression, with the working definition used by this project. The works the definition rests on, with the level of evidence each was appraised at. (c. 335 BCE). Poetics. Supports historical claims about where the term katharsis entered aesthetics. It makes no empirical claim, and its meaning is contested by commentators. (1895). Studien über Hysterie [Studies on hysteria]. Supports historical claims about the cathartic method and abreaction. Uncontrolled case reports cannot show whether the method was effective. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00403.x Supports the claim that changes in cognitive and linguistic processes during writing predict better health more than reduced inhibition alone. A review by the paradigm's originator; later meta-analyses report variable effects.Where the site uses it
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