Catharsis

Catharsis is the purification or release of intense emotions, above all pity and fear, that a spectator feels while watching a dramatic work, leaving them in a state of inner renewal.

The word comes from the Greek κάθαρσις (kátharsis), meaning purification or cleansing. Its original sense was physical and ritual: in ancient Greece it designated practices for removing the stain of blood or other impurity, and in medicine it referred to the evacuation of bodily fluids. Its application to art is due above all to Aristotle, who uses it in the Poetics to describe the effect of tragedy on its audience: by seeing feelings such as pity and fear enacted on stage, along with the inevitable punishment the characters suffer, the spectator experiences those emotions without bearing their consequences and leaves the performance calmer and better understood.

How this effect works has been widely debated. The traditional reading speaks of the purgation or purification of the passions; others, such as Lessing, understood it as a recalibration that restores pity and fear to a virtuous balance. In the twentieth century some scholars proposed an intellectual reading, according to which the pleasure of tragedy lies in understanding the causes of misfortune. In Platonic and Neoplatonic texts the term also acquires a spiritual sense, linked to the purification of the soul.

In psychology the word is associated above all with Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, who used it to describe the sudden release of a repressed memory or emotion when it is brought into consciousness during treatment. Its therapeutic effectiveness remains disputed. Today the term is also used more loosely for any intense experience that brings relief or renewal, and, in the analysis of popular culture, for the collective expression of emotion at large gatherings.