MEANING
1. The release of strong, held-back feelings through expression, art, or another emotionally involving experience.
2. In psychoanalytic theory, the release of repressed feelings when their associated experiences return to conscious awareness.
3. The emptying of the bowels, especially when brought about by a purgative substance.
Use it for
describing emotional relief after a performance; showing feelings finally finding an outlet; discussing a narrative’s emotional effect without claiming a clinical cureDistinguishes general emotional release, a specific psychoanalytic process, and the separate medical sense of bowel evacuation. Writing functions: Emotion / Psychological Release.
Words that belong together
- emotional catharsis
- a moment of catharsis
- catharsis through art
On the page
Writing the letter brought a brief catharsis, though she never sent it.
The final scene offers catharsis without pretending that the family’s conflict has disappeared.
The article uses catharsis in the psychoanalytic sense of bringing a repressed experience into awareness.
Her analysis distinguishes the theory of catharsis from the audience’s simpler experience of emotional relief.
In the medical notebook, catharsis refers to bowel evacuation rather than relief from grief.
Word forms
- Base
- catharsis
Usage notes
Countable or uncountable: catharsis; plural catharses. Variant katharsis is not a second entry. No fabricated regular plural catharsises. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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