Catharsis is a controversial topic in psychotherapeutic practice. For starters, there is confusion regarding what is actually meant by “catharsis” — is it just emotional discharge, or is it something more? Before addressing this question, let’s briefly look at the history of the notion of catharsis.

“Catharsis” is derived from the Greek word katharsis, meaning to cleanse or purge. Aristotle thought that drama produced a catharsis in its viewers by arousing in them pity and terror, and then purging them of the same emotions. Yet katharsis had other meanings in ancient Greece, including: pruning (as of trees); clearing (as of twigs and stones from land); cleaning (as of food); and clarification (as achieved through explanation). The notion of catharsis as purgation is found in Dante’s fourteenth century masterpiece, “The Divine Comedy,” in which the ascent to Heaven has to be made through Purgatory, so as to ready souls for their desired ascension. And is not such a journey, traversing as it does realms of darkness and intense suffering, suggestive of personal pruning, clearing, cleaning, and clarification, as well as of actual purging?

In the 1890s, Freud suggested that catharsis — in the form of emotional discharge — could benefit patients by helping them to “empty” themselves of repressed emotions (as in the draining of a reservoir). Though Freud later rejected catharsis as a primary change mechanism, it nonetheless persisted and evolved in various nonconventional approaches to psychotherapy, as exemplified by Wilhelm Reich’s pioneering work and the radical emotive therapies that arose in the 1960s and 1970s (such as Primal Therapy, Bioenergetics, Gestalt Therapy, and the more extreme extensions of these infamously featured at the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh).

As a cleansing or purification, catharsis is of course an ancient practice, conducted worldwide through healing rituals, exorcism, and confession. An example of a healing ritual is the Barong dance of Bali, in which an enormous amount of aggression and fear is released (in both dancers and audience) through an archetypal confrontation between forces of darkness and light, as embodied by dancers seemingly possessed by such forces. At the climax of an authentic Barong (facsimiles are staged for tourists), obviously entranced men uninhibitedly plunge daggers into their bodies, but there is no bleeding or injury, presumably because of the suggestive power of their altered state of consciousness. (In their trance, they have complete faith that the Barong — representing archetypal good — will protect them from any harm.)

Exorcism, which arguably is the ancestral prototype of contemporary psychotherapy, is dramatically cathartic, doing what it can to drive out whatever “demons” are possessing the afflicted person, even if that means overpowering that person. Anyone wedged in a therapeutic impasse could be said to be possessed by a particular behavioral pattern, but there are times when such “possession” takes on a quality that brings forth hair-raising shivers from those watching, as if an entity-like presence has literally taken over the person being observed. Whether such a take-over represents the dramatic intrusion of a hitherto submerged personality or behavioral complex of that person, or the actual entry of an “alien” energy, does not matter so much as how that particular presence is met.

It is generally most useful in such circumstances to directly face and directly talk with what is apparently possessing that person, as though it were indeed a discrete entity, allowing it to uninhibitedly express itself. Only then can its departure be beneficially managed (at which point there’s usually an immediate change in the person’s voice, body language, and perhaps even features). Departure here means sufficient separation so as to make space for eventual integration, implicit in which is the recognition -- and it is not just an intellectual recognition -- that even the most “alien” energy is part of one.

Though usually less dramatic a process than healing rituals or exorcism, confession can also be cathartic, be it done in a Native American sweatlodge ceremony, in Catholic practice, or in psychotherapy. Simply talking about one’s difficulties to a compassionate listener can sometimes elicit a deeply healing emotional release. And if there is no one available to thus listen, writing about one’s difficulties may bring about a similarly cathartic release; as what has been held within is permitted unguarded expression, the very energy that was being employed in the service of suppression becomes available for more life-giving purposes. In talking it out, in writing it out, we are like young children engaged in self-talk, spontaneously dramatizing the various roles representative of their internal workings. Like such children, we are permitting our private self public exposure, if only to ourselves, through our confessional practices.

So what is catharsis? When people in intensive psychotherapy are crying deeply or raging, their emoting may be referred to as “catharting” -- but is this necessarily catharsis? To simply equate catharsis with emotional discharge robs it of a more specific (and inclusive) meaning. Catharsis usually does involve such discharge, but only insofar as the feelings being expressed are “normally” repressed or suppressed. The actual value of such expression is, of course, another matter -- part of the problem with cathartic methodology in psychotherapy is its often unquestioned valuing of emotional release per se, without sufficient attention being given to context (and issues such as the possible need for containment as opposed to release). If what is needed is a firming of personal boundaries as opposed to a dissolution of such boundaries, catharsis may or may not be called for, and even if it is deemed necessary, it may need to unfold in a manner that asks as much for subtlety and slowness of release as for outright energetic discharge.

In emotional-release work, we need to ask not only what is being released and of what value its release is, but also if such release may be obscuring something else that needs to be addressed (such as escapist or dissociative tendencies). Enthusiasts of “letting it all hang out” not only provide easy targets for keen anti-“ventilationist” sensibilities, but also tend to oversimplify emotional release practices, as if engaging in them could not be other than inherently healing.

Even so, studies indicating that cathartic procedures are ineffectual or even counterproductive do not really demonstrate that catharsis is not necessary or has no appropriate place in psychotherapy, but only that certain cathartic procedures are ineffectual, counterproductive, or unnecessary.

In one such study, subjects who had been frustrated in the attempted completion of a task and then mistreated by a confederate of the experimenters tended to increase progressively the intensity of electric shocks administered to the confederate. The cathartic benefits (as measured by reductions in diastolic blood pressure) of having delivered earlier shocks to the confederate apparently did not defuse their aggressive intent. However, what was cathartic in this case may not have been cathartic in a more than merely superficial sense. We do not know, for example, how cathartic it actually was for subjects to deliver shocks to the confederate, and indeed if it even was cathartic (i.e., was there really any emotional release?) -- a blood pressure decrease is not necessarily indicative of catharsis, unless of course we reduce catharsis to physiological correlates.

In another study, nondirective counselling sessions (talking only) were found to be more effective in reducing the expression of anger than was hitting a pillow with a bataka (foam rubber bat). However, some of the bataka wielders did experience a reduction of subsequent anger expression. Reanalysis of the experimenter notes indicated that these subjects had also engaged in spontaneous verbalizations and explanations as they whacked the pillow. This suggests that the combination of emotional expression and fitting phrasings is more effective than nonverbal catharsis alone.

How, why, and in what context cathartic means are employed are essential considerations in any meaningful study of catharsis, as is the skill, heart, presence, motivation, and agenda of the therapist. (Psychosomatic literature generally gives support to the value of catharsis, if only through suggesting that suppressed emotion -- and anger in particular -- may be significantly related to the development of various chronic illnesses.)

At its worst, catharsis is simply an indiscriminate and inappropriate emotional “unloading” or “dumping” -- either on an actual person, or on a representation of them, such as the “transference object” of psychoanalysis -- little more than an adoration of emotional discharge. However, even contextually insensitive catharsis is not necessarily always without value (at least when it is skilfully overseen) -- particularly in its ability to mobilize “stuck” energy -- but resorting to it whenever we are feeling emotionally reactive simply makes a habit out of it, a habit whose expression we may easily confuse with being “open” or “honest.”

Some therapists see catharsis as the release of aggressive or hostile feelings toward displaced targets (persons, things, even ideas or ideologies). For them, catharsis is simply a “blowing off steam” phenomenon devoid of any investment in a particular outcome. This, however, is more suggestive of an “adult” temper tantrum -- which at times may be needed! -- than of an actual “undamming” of emotion.

Such a discharge of energy -- which may amount to little more than emotional masturbation -- may provide some relief, but generally only rubs us the wrong way, leaving us drained of the very energies we could have used to fuel our entry into a more connected, relational, or life-enhancing level of being. Of course, cathartic procedures need not be thus confined, and can be used in psychologically sophisticated contexts (as in skilfully guided psychodrama).

Furthermore, even if cathartic processes lead to more of what they are supposed to “reduce” -- like anger -- this does not necessarily prove the inefficacy of catharsis, since (1) an increase in what “should” be reduced may sometimes actually be beneficial; and (2) what has been increased is not necessarily the same “thing” as it was prior to its increase. Also, so-called “reduction” (as in “anger-reduction”) may be a misnomer, in that a lessening of symptoms (which are usually self-reported) does not necessarily preclude the possibility that the originating “problem” is still subterraneanly present, suppressed to the point of exhibiting little or none of its presence. Is weeping that brings on a fuller or deeper weeping necessarily a failure or proof that catharsis doesn’t work?

A deeper kind of catharsis than emotional outpouring in of itself involves feeling in context -- this connected catharsis is not just emotional discharge or purging, but rather is a contextually fitting, unguardedly felt expression of one's core (or at least currently gripping) suffering. Such feeling-release is in contrast to disconnected catharsis -- the releasing of the energy of disconnected pain, pain marooned from its originating factors. Getting angry because someone in a film is being beaten is contextless feeling; getting angry because your father used to beat you is feeling in context.

Connected catharsis, with its sensitivity and attention to integration as well as to release, is at the very heart of cutting-edge integral psychotherapies. To engage in it -- which is far from a one-shot healing -- is more of a surrender than a doing, entailing a kind of helplessness that, when fully embraced and unresistingly cooperated with, actually empowers us, if only by “moving” us closer to our core of Being.

Such helplessness -- which is at essence a dynamic yielding -- is not the stance of a victim, but rather that of an explorer, a seeker of the depths, wherein are “stored” more than just our old wounds. When the waves, the sometimes enormous waves, of rising feeling come, they are not fought or fled, but insead are allowed, at the right time, to “take over,” with no concern for their destination. In trusting this process (assuming that it is being skilfully guided), we not only ride the waves, but become them. Their power becomes ours, not to have, but to be.

The raingrey shore I walk
Leaning into windchilled rawness
Until I’m ground to sand, drowned in torrents of cloud
Spilling shattered against another shore
My bloodrise the ocean’s roar
The rainbowed shore I walk
Letting the dawning day set my pace
Letting the broken waves have what I take to be me
Letting naked Wonder undress me
Uprooted until I find a truer ground
As I loiter and crawl and fall so, so near
To where Love, storming ever brighter,
Cannot help but outshine fear