Emotional Catharsis: Will It Heal You or Harm You?
Have you heard about therapies that involve intensely hitting pillows, screaming at the top of your lungs, or crying uncontrollably as a way of releasing painful emotions and deep-seated trauma?
Although cathartic practices like this are sometimes given distinctive names, for example, “primal therapy,” they’re generally know as catharsis, catharsis psychology, or catharsis work.
This is the definition of catharsis given by Oxford Languages Dictionary:
“The process of releasing, and providing relief from strong or repressed emotions.”
Does the idea of getting it all out, once and for all, never to be plagued again, sound appealing to you? I understand if it does!
People often feel better, at last momentarily, after a fierce session of pillow beating accompanied by a verbal free-for-all.
But does it stick? Do cathartic practices really release emotional pain at its core? Might they even be harmful?
Let’s take a look.
The History of Cathartic Psychology
The popularity of cathartic practice has waxed and waned since the time of Freud, according to Peter Levine, PhD., an acclaimed pioneer in modern-day somatic-based trauma work.
Although he later abandoned the theory, Freud, following his teacher Charcot, originally believed a patient had to relive traumatic memories and express them through intense catharsis.
Despite Freud’s dismissal of the practice, his student, Wilhelm Reich disagreed and carried forth the torch for the cathartic release of emotions in psychotherapy.
Cathartic practice waned for a few decades while rationalism took the forefront in psychotherapeutic approaches in forms like Rational Emotive Therapy.
But emotional catharsis was made popular again in the 1960s by therapists like Arthur Janov who introduced primal therapy and the primal scream. Cathartic work was also employed in “encounter groups” at the time and used in approaches like rebirthing.
Psychology trends have wandered back and forth between a focus on emotions and a focus on the mind over the years. But trends now seem to favor a balance that includes a focus on both emotions and reason as seen in therapies like dialectical behavior therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy.
But catharsis practice hasn’t died:
You’ll still read articles promoting cathartic practice.
There are spiritual groups that employ emotional catharsis to theoretically resolve emotional wounds and prepare you for spiritual work. I know this from personal experience having done prescribed exercises that involved walking quickly around a room with thirty other people who are screaming, crying and immersed in other cathartic expressions.
Catharsis is one of a long menu of emotional work practices used in modern-day psycho-spiritual circles like Women Within International and the Mankind Project. I’ve been part of a circle for more than five years. I believe some circles are more prone to using cathartic work than others.
You might come across catharsis practice in movies or television series’ like Nine Perfect Strangers. In this story, nine individuals who seek healing and transformation gather for a 10-day retreat at Tranquillum House. But it sounds like their experience is anything but tranquil.
In a Psychology Today review of Nine Perfect Strangers, Andrew Penn, RN, professor of psychiatric nursing and psychiatric assessment at the University of California, San Francisco, focuses specifically on the catharsis aspect of the film. He says:
“Putting aside the obvious violations of current psychedelic therapy protocols, the most troubling aspect of Nine Perfect Strangers, is a more insidious and veiled message and possibly the most dangerous one: that psychological change only comes from dramatic and painful moments of emotional catharsis, especially if the source of one’s emotional distress is a traumatic event (as it is for many of the characters in the show).”
And, among psychology and psychiatric colleagues, he’s not alone in his view of catharsis.
The Problem with Catharsis
In his book, In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, renown psychologist Peter Levine, PhD, registers multiple cautions in regard to emotional catharsis work:
He points out:
Using the example of anger, once you begin to attack, the feeling of anger shifts to the action—hitting, kicking, etc. The underlying emotions may be diminished or lost, and not fundamentally changed.
When you engage in unconfined emotional expression, you may split off from what you’re feeling.
Emotional catharsis can become self-perpetuating, making an individual crave further emotional release. Levine believes this can lead to, “…an ever-tightening spiral that frequently culminates in a therapeutic dead-end.”
Without adequate resources to manage, digest, and assimilate the intense emotions that can arise, catharsis work can be re-traumatizing.
So much more has been learned about trauma and the brain in the last two decades. This has brought about new leading-edge trauma therapies like Somatic Experiencing (SE), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Internal Family Systems (IFS).
These newer therapies emphasize:
First and foremost, establishing a sense of safety
Ensuring the client has adequate resources before delving into traumatic memories. According to nervous system expert, Irene Lyon, MSc, a resource is anything “…that helps you to soothe and settle and provides a sense of goodness; anchors you to the here and now; and prevents a downward spiraling of thoughts, emotions, and memories that can impede our healing process.”
Carefully titrating the work so the client gradually increases their capacity for experiencing traumatic memories and painful emotions without becoming re-traumatized.
They also encourage containment of emotion rather than catharsis.
But it’s not just practitioners of these newer modalities that have questioned the efficacy of catharsis. In 1969, psychologist Rollo May remarked that a ventilationist approach is:
“an egregious mistake of much contemporary psychotherapy — mainly the illusion that merely experiencing or acting out is all that is necessary for cure. Experiencing is absolutely essential; but if it occurs without the changing of the patient’s concepts, symbols, and myths, the ‘experiencing’ is truncated and has a masturbatory rather than fully procreative character.”
Containment: The Opposite of Catharsis
In his book, Levine uses the following Zen story to illustrate the meaning of containment of emotion.
“A young, brash samurai swordsman confronted a venerated Zen master with the following demand: ‘I want you to tell me the truth about the existence of heaven and hell.”
The master replied gently and with delicate curiosity, ‘How is it that such an ugly and untalented man as you can become a samurai?’
Immediately, the wrathful young samurai pulled out his sword and raised it above his head, read to strike the old man and cut him in half. Without fear, and in complete calm, the Zen master gazed upward and spoke softly: ‘This is hell.’ The samurai paused, sword held above his head. His arms fell like leaves to his side, while his face softened from its angry glare. He quietly reflected. Placing his sword back into his sheath, he bowed to the teacher in reverence. ‘And this,’ the master replied again with equal calm, ‘is heaven.’”
The aim is to catch intense emotions before they inflame us. Constraint requires awareness and embodiment, key practices in somatic-based therapy work.
Containment is not the suppression or repression of emotion. One can feel an intense emotion without acting upon it. And indeed, in somatic-based therapy, one learns to feel painful emotions in a titrated fashion of small but increasing doses. Through titration, clients can learn to handle previously unendurable emotions.
“The ability to effectively contain and process extreme emotional states is one of the linchpins both of effective, truly dynamical therapy and of living a vital, robust life.” — Peter Levine
Closing Thoughts
I’ve had a go at beating pillows on a number of occasions since my first encounter group in college, decades ago. Catharsis work has never done anything for me, aside from a momentary state change.
I much prefer the titrated approach of somatic-based therapies like Somatic Experiencing, Organic Intelligence, and the Neuro-Affective Relational Model (NARM). I’ve been able to heal painful wounds and deep traumas through these methods without flinging myself into intense distress again and again.
I won’t say that catharsis work is never therapeutic or that it never works. In fact, I wrote this piece after reading a recent article by Damian Clark in which he highly recommends primal therapy. He says this cathartic therapy cracked him open.
Should you be looking into therapy or inadvertently stumble upon cathartic work in a group setting, I want you to know it’s not your only option. You should also be aware that catharsis has come under intense criticism as less effective and potentially re-traumatizing.
In the end, of course, the choice is up to you.
Sources: In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness by Peter Levine, Ph.D
[Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels]
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