ABSTRACT

The paper intends to clarify the meaning and definition of catharsis as a means of psychological therapeutic remedy since its conception. An attempt has been made to show that pathological symptoms subside if proper cathartic reaction takes place. A distinction has also been made between the original process of catharsis that takes place naturally in one’s mind & body and the tutored responses generated for experimental observations on the same. It is noticed that true cathartic response cannot be seen in a laboratory setting since it is a natural process.

KEYWORDS

Catharsis, Freud, Abreaction, Emotions, Impulse, Interference, Discharge, Suppression, Repression

INTRODUCTION & HISTORY OF CATHARSIS

Once defined as ‘The purgation of pity and terror in theater audiences’ by Aristotle in Third Century B.C. The word terror referred to the emotion of fear but the word pity was not a specific emotion … it suggested empathetic identification with the characters in the drama. He wished to define it as the emotional reactions of audience to the drama which eventually turned into a narrow domain. He insisted that catharsis in drama is not only a source entertainment and pleasure but also a necessity for the survival of the concept of society.

Centuries later, cathartic method came back to life when Breuer and then Freud started using it to treat severe hysterical symptoms of patients under hypnosis. Breuer came across cathartic technique by chance that worked with little effort from him. Patients seemed to have an emotional release which, if uninterrupted, proved therapeutic. Catharsis was explained by the term ‘Abreaction’ as defined by Freud and Breuer. Abreaction in their words was “The whole class of voluntary reflexes, from tears to acts of revenge, in which as experience shows us, the affects are discharged. If this reaction takes place to a sufficient amount a large part of the affect disappears as a result.” They explained it further- “ If the reaction is suppressed, the affect remains attached to this memory. An injury that has been repaid, even if only in words, is recollected quite differently from one that has had to be accepted…the injured person’s reaction to the trauma only exercises a completely cathartic effect if it is an adequate reaction as revenge, But language serves as a substitute for action, by its help an affect can be abreacted almost as effectively.”

This was later used in the emotive therapies of the seventies like Re-evaluation counselling (developed by Jackins), Gestalt therapy (developed by S.Perls), Psychodrama (developed by Jacob L. Moreno), Primal therapy (developed by Janov) , New Identity therapy (developed by Casriel). But when Freud finally abandoned ‘the Cathartic Method’ to treat his patients it was not because he believed catharsis was a failure but because he had found a much more reliable tool- free association. This is often misunderstood as catharsis proving out to be an ineffective tool on account of which it was given up by Freud. Yet it is to be remembered that he was never an emotivist. He believed that affect was associated with the resurrection of traumatic or repressed memories so instead of going the ‘cathartic way’, he later chose to go ‘the memory way’ that is, he chose the cognitive tool of overcoming repression with the help of free association. His emphasis on free association de-emphasized the role of catharsis. The emotive therapies, on the other hand, were developed solely on the basis of catharsis. They believed that emotions are stored in the mind or body that need to be released after which they bring respite to the individual. They found expression of emotions to help with the reduction of and relief from psychological issues.

Along came the studies in experimental social psychology that produced large body of research against the notion of catharsis wherein aggression catharsis increased aggressive behaviour instead of reducing it and vicarious aggression (viewing or participating in vicarious violence) also resulted in increase of hostility in individuals.

One ponders the cause of the difference between the clinical and experimental findings. The clinical findings of Breuer, Freud, Jackins, Janov, Casriel stand opposed to the experimental findings of Berkowitz (1962), Feshback & Singer (1971), Quanty (1976). Where the experimental findings point towards increase in hostility instead of reduction, clinical findings suggest otherwise.

Breuer, Freud and emotivists like Jackins, Janov referred catharsis as the repressed affect that finally sought discharge in consciousness with the help of the therapist. What behaviourists called catharsis is artificial emoting of affect and sometimes, thoughts under the tutorship of the therapist who provokes certain kind of responses in order to provide relief. Here, the objective of the therapy would be venting or ‘acting out’ or ‘Behaviourizing’of aggression or any other emotion. It appeared to have palliative effect on the individual suffering from a psychical trauma. However, it was noticed to be short lived. Angry yelling or pressured crying does not come naturally in such sessions. Because it is supposed to be a session where discharge of emotions has to take place, the person is expected to emote. Whether he wants to or not in that moment is not of primary importance. It is simply believed that left over or retained affect is what causes the distress to the individual in question and it, therefore, must be discharged.

Catharsis was somehow treated by emotivists as if a human was a carrier of these emotions that needed to be released. In fact, the language of emotions came close to the language of hydraulics. Sadness ‘wells up’, grief comes in ‘waves’, anger ‘boils’… emotions were understood as causes of one’s ailment and only expression of those emotions were seen to help in temporary or permanent respite. Gradually, emotive therapies like Re-grief therapy or Feeling therapy became only about expression of emotions under the tutorship of the therapist whether or not, there really was enough inside to be released. Verbalized repressed affect, which was the sole motive of catharsis, turned into emoting anything and everything, whether or not there was any repressed affect that needed to be released. The emotive therapies first shaped into the channels for verbalizing affect and then into spaces for verbalizing thoughts. The distinction between affect and thoughts dissolved letting the thoughts take hold of the emotions. Emotions under the influence of thoughts cease to be passive drivers of behaviour and end up becoming active determinants of behaviour. This is one of the reasons why experimental social psychology has produced large body of research against the notion of catharsis wherein aggression catharsis increased aggressive behaviour instead of reducing it and vicarious aggression (viewing or participating in vicarious violence) also resulted in increase of hostility in individuals.

As observed, there are two different concepts that are referred here by the same name- the process of catharsis. And catharsis has been accused of, by way of experimental findings, to lead more aggression rather than less of it. Perhaps this is the reason why clinical findings oppose the results derived from experiments…because both revelations refer to two different concepts using the same name. And yet, they share one more thing besides the name. They also share the concept of emotions. Affect is what is common to both exponentially contrasting ideas of catharsis. Both require discharge of emotional tension. So in order to save true catharsis from further misrepresentation, one has to begin from the basic notion of emotion. Only when the construct of emotion is understood, the difference in the two distinct concepts of catharsis can be appreciated.

EMOTIONS

Scheff (2007) explains that angry yelling does not count as a reflex like a spontaneous crying or laughter or any other involuntary reaction. He insists that aggression catharsis is a complex sequence of external behaviour and not a reflex. According to him, catharsis happens when emotional climax or orgasm is reached. This is similar to what Breuer and Freud pointed out in terms of abreaction and its definition. In their point of view, catharsis can only come along when there is a voluntary reflex to discharge an affect. They also explain an injury which if un-suppressed needs an adequate reaction to bring about a cathartic effect but if suppressed attaches itself to a memory which can at best be ‘talked out’ as a fair substitute to the original reflex. In so many words, the early thinkers of the concept have laid the foundation for the case for catharsis that can help a reader to differentiate between catharsis and voluntary, provoked action which is more often than not confused with catharsis.

To understand it better, one can look at Newton’s third law- ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.’ Now catharsis has much to do with it. When Freud & Breuer explained catharsis, they spoke about reaction. Any reaction takes place against an action and it has to be of equal force. The action in this case is the stimulation and the response (the reaction) is made up of impulse, perception, manipulation and consummation (Scheff, 2007).

• Impulse is the drive generated as the first response to the stimulus. It is raw in nature- untamed & instinctual.
• Perception is the awareness and understanding of the impulse risen in the mind of the individual.
• Manipulation is assessment & evaluation of the right action with regards to the object or stimulus.
• Consummation is the employment of the chosen action in order to satisfy the original impulse.
• Together these four process stages initiate the process of emotion. The emotional arousal begins with the birth of the impulse and ends with the consummation of the action employed in order to satiate the impulse generated in response to the stimulus.

As such, emotions last until the impulse is satisfied, that is, until the equal and opposite reaction against the action (stimulus) has been achieved. Once the emotional orgasm or climax has been attained, the emotional arousal decreases to zero within seconds and the emotion comes to an end. All arousal need to reach their climax. If they are interrupted, they attach to the memories and stay as affect or emotion without finding their orgasm or discharge. An emotional sequence, once initiated, must come to a completion. In the case of long lasting emotions like love or hate, the emotional sequence starts but approaches its zero arousal infinitely slowly.

It is the interruption in the sequence of emotions that causes retention of affect within the individual thereby attaching it to the memories of the event that acted as the stimulus for the emotional sequence to initiate. This affect, so attached to the memories, awaits to be discharged as Freud pointed out. Unless the emotional sequence comes to its natural end and the consummation is attained, the climax remains out of reach. The action occurred but its equal and opposite reaction failed to transpire. The experience or the event in the mind of the individual, to the memory of which the undischarged is now attached, ceases to get over. The individual keeps reliving under the stimulation of various associations. What Freud did by making use of ‘Free Association’ as a cognitive tool was to uncover these associations to reach the core memory of the experience that failed to materialize. On reaching the goal-memory with the help of the thread of associations, the traumatic experience is re-lived by the patient/client. Words and language often act as a proper substitute to actions. The repressed memory finally gives way to the original interrupted emotional sequence, final consummation of the reaction (to satisfy the impulse against the stimulus) takes place and catharsis is reached.

Thus, emotion is nothing but the sequence of the reaction against the action, interrupted. If it were not discontinued or stopped, there would be no affect. It would simply be a response to a stimulus, a reaction to an action. A halted or broken sequence of response to a stimulus is what gives rise to the concept of emotions.

Pain or any emotion, thus suppressed needs to be felt. An emotion is simply a response left suspended without reaching fruition. What Breuer and Freud called abreaction was the completion of these voluntary reflexes which remained suspended due to repression. This is the concept of catharsis which was found and then later abandoned by Freud in order to use ‘Free Association’ in psychoanalysis. True catharsis occurs when the repressed affect is let out in the same way it was earlier meant to. It should be as voluntary in the current circumstance as it was when it was first repressed. However, the experimental findings could not study these reflexes or voluntary reactions in the form of suppressed affect. They turned out to be useless in the face of identifying between an interrupted emotional sequence and artificially generated emotional reactions as in the case of aggression catharsis or vicarious aggression. These laboratory studies could not differentiate between an unmaterialized impulse and a provoked response. The experimental studies could only calculate the tutored responses under controlled situations. There was never true catharsis that was ever brought under the experimentation and what is an experiment after all? A good experiment can always be replicated. However, emotions can never be replicated; no two humans will ever have the same emotions in the same intensity at the same time. The clinical findings can therefore be justified but experiments done on emotions do not provide trustworthy results.

Some emotions have certain specific stimuli. These can also be called triggers. They instigate the response which if left incomplete give rise to feelings. An emotion like grief has a stimulus in loss; fear has a trigger in external or internal danger; anger has a stimulus in frustration and shame or embarrassment is triggered by threat to bond. If only grief was not stopped when it was, one would not need to grieve or find its manifestation in some expression later. Grief over something implies loss; a loss that needs to be mourned. It just so happens that if someone grieves over a loss of a dog for more than two years, his relatives tell him to move on. But it is important to note that his mourning is not over. He is done accepting the loss. His psyche still looks for the lost object. Time is an element which many people factor in the process of grieving when it especially should be kept out of the equation. Loss is loss. Big or small object should not matter but unfortunately, in today’s world it does. Pain needs to be felt. It demands to be felt. It is a warranted reaction to an equal and opposite action that has already taken place. Because if it isn’t acknowledged, it will find a way to come out and make its presence felt. More often than not, it comes out as symptoms.

If any danger was simply allowed to fear from, it probably would not materialize in the way of some unusual symptom. But whether it is an external danger or an internal one, an individual is usually advised to ‘pull it together’. When he is unable to, he is referred to some kind of therapy. For instance, if an adult has intense fear of spiders since childhood such that he cannot be in the same room if he senses there is a spider present, he is called to have Arachnophobia. In such a case, he is usually referred to some kind of therapy but one wonders if there is just an undischarged and interrupted emotion which overtime has accumulated, accentuated and evolved because there definitely must have been an action that triggered the said phobia for the child who, as an adult, is still terrified of spiders. Perhaps there is a reaction that remained suspended and retained as an affect, attached to a memory, which only needs to be discharged in a cathartic way.

Similarly, when a need or a wish is frustrated, it can lead to anger. But when this anger is not permitted to come out, it stays. Sometimes, with time this anger turns into a feeling of disappointment. It is the opposite of climax- an anti-climax which, due to the failure in discharge, changes its quality of active, excited anger to passive dissatisfaction and dejection. However, the original quality of this discontentment remains the same- anger. The retardation in release of the initial reflex to the stimulus of need or want caused by frustration settles down in an individual’s psyche and looks for an expression in any way possible thereby resulting in distress.

Along the same lines, there is the emotion of embarrassment or shame which is caused by a threat to bond. The action or stimulus in this case is the fear of being an outcast. The bond shared with one’s group is threatened. An individuals, due to some unfortunate accident, ends up feeling that he would not be able to belong to the same class anymore. His identification with others comes under risk and there is a credible fear in him losing the association & inter-relation with them. His sense of belongingness faces peril. The certainty that he used to enjoy till now with his peers is at stake. The embarrassment is the resultant of the dis-similarity gained on account of an event that weakens one’s bond to his peers. The foremost reaction to the threat to bond is hiding. When a person develops severe allergic rash on his face, he is only embarrassed if he goes out in public. As long as he stays inside his room without coming in sight of others, he hardly ever feels shame over his allergy. It is only when he perceives that he is being looked at by others, does he feel different from them. This sense of being different is what causes him embarrassment. However, if the initial response to the stimulus of fear of being different is allowed to take place, the embarrassment ceases to exist. In this case, if the person takes his time to hide and to prepare himself to face others; there would not be a sense of shame because he would be prepared to tackle the situation. Only when he does not have the time to prepare himself for the unexpected event which might threaten his sense of social inclusion does he feel embarrassed.

INTERFERENCE WITH DISCHARGE

As a society, as the researcher observes, we have been brought up with the notion that the only way to stop having distress is by stopping the process of distress altogether. In order to stop suffering, it is believed that if the expression of pain is brought under control the goal is achieved. However, the same is not true for good emotions like happiness. If you are happy, one is expected to express it unequivocally; sometimes even after the emotion ceases to exist.

Thus, interference with discharge of an uncomfortable emotion has become a common practice in our society. If an infant cries, he is coerced into stopping. Once he stops, the care-givers feel that they have succeeded in providing comfort to the baby. Children are not permitted to cry; boy are not allowed to cry as, owing to their gender, it is perceived as a sign of weakness and it is not acceptable of girls to cry since it expresses their protest and anger. When there is always suppression waiting on the other end, an individual conditions himself to repress his emotional distress on his own. In other words, when his emotional expression of any uncomfortable(to his care-givers) kind is met with resistance, he understands that it is not welcome outside. Moreover, if it is met with punishment then it cements the idea of repressing his emotional discharge for fear of some manner of punishment. In time, this behaviour of controlling one’s expression of distress is over learnt and the boy forgets to cry & the girl forgets to express her anger, except under extremely provocative circumstances. On account of continuous interreference with emotional expression, by others or oneself, a person accumulates a great amount of repressed emotions.

Repressed sensations and feelings get accumulated in the form of bodily tensions which may go unidentified. They remain and collect gradually in such a way that it is usually hard to recognize. Over a period of time, they may sometimes shape into tangible bodily pains with no reasonable organic source. Nevertheless, it is the frustration of the completion of emotional sequence (impulse, perception, manipulation and consummation) or emotions that causes the tension instead of healthy discharge.

If there is an emotional sequence that is meant to take place as a reaction to an action and it is interfered with & the consummation of the intended action on original impulse is unable to pass, it remains as a suppressed reaction and gets attached as an undischarged affect to the memory of the event which created such a reaction in the first place.

As Freud pointed out, we, as a society, are supposed to tame our impulses so as to remain civilized. Civilization is based on the foundation of controlling one’s desires for the accomplishment of the greater good. The restraining of one’s urges leads to frustration. This frustration either stays inside individual as unreleased affect, born out of the frustrated drive, or gets thrown out in some way. When it stays inside the person, it manifests itself in various ways; it plays some role in the person’s life- either by way of organic pains or by way of mental obstacles. Unjustified anxieties, depression, fear etc. control one’s life’s choices, decisions and sentiments. The undischarged & frustrated impulses hold people hostage; such impulses turn out to be the cause of mental pain.

On the other hand, when these repressed impulses are able to find expression by way of words or meaningful action, they find a channel to ultimately achieve the consummation stage of the emotional sequence. The equal & opposite reaction to a triggering action is able to find completion when the affect attached to the memory of the action discovers a way out. Therefore, it is not simply the manifestation of any emotion that relieves a person of his undischarged affect but it has to be the same repressed affect that must be channelized out- in terms of words and/or actions. True catharsis occurs when the suppressed emotional sequence finds an expression.

Many research studies have concluded that its participants ended up more angry after yelling or emoting their anger after a controlled instigation. However, this concept itself is flawed because catharsis happens when a frustrated reactionary emotional sequence finds an expression; not when a response is provoked under experimental settings. That is not true catharsis. It is a tutored response to an action. Here, no part of emotional sequence was suppressed. In fact, there was a channel provided to vent out. It is important to note that venting out an irritation is not catharsis; although it might prove to be cathartic for some under the right circumstances.

CONCLUSION

Thus, it can be seen that catharsis is a complex process of channelizing the affect already stored in the body by way of memories and emotions. No true catharsis can have an opposite effect of increased anger. The frustration, build up over a long period of time, is able to find a source to reach an expression of change in its quality. With this in mind, experiments that have shown that emoting a certain negative emotion can lead to increase in the same emotion is a different concept than the concept of true catharsis. Perhaps, it will be beneficial for the social scientists to further the studies into the true nature of catharsis instead of using the term as a label for any kind of expression of a pent-up emotion.