Catharsis is from the Ancient Greek word κάθαρσις, katharsis, 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.[1][2]
In dramaturgy, the term usually refers to arousing negative emotion in an audience, who subsequently expels it, making them feel happier.[3]
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.[4][5]
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.
Catharism was used by outsiders to describe the thinking of a Christian movement, named because of its interest in purity.
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.
The theory of catharsis has a disarming affinity with the expressional theory, since it emphasizes emotion, asserts a change in emotion as a result of aesthetic operations, and concludes on a note of freedom in relation to the emotion
Catharsis in Shakespearean tragedy involves ... some kind of restoration of order and a renewal or enhancement of our positive feelings for the hero.