Catharsis

History of the concept

Aristote: the origin of the concept

As astonishing as that can appear, it is not as well in the Poétique as in the Policy of Aristote as one finds the term developed, in connection with the music under consideration from a political point of view (1341a23 and especially 1341b32-1342a17):

“We see these same people, when they had recourse to the melodies which transport the heart out of itself, given of balance as if they had taken a remedy and a purging. It is with this same treatment since must be necessarily subjected at the same time those which are inclined with pity and those which are inclined with terror, and all the others which, generally, are under the empire of an unspecified emotion in so far as there is of each one of them tendency to such emotions, and for all it occurs a certain purging and a reduction accompanied by pleasure. However it is in the same way also that the melodies purgatrices get for the man an inoffensive joy. ”

Although it returns to its Poétique for more explanations (“we will speak again about it more clearly in our Poétique ”) it was to refer to the second book (lost!) because the term appears only once in the work which reached us (in 1449b28):

“the tragedy (...) is an imitation made by characters in action and not by the means of the narration, and which via pity and fear, achieves the purging of the emotions of this kind. ”

The catharsis is the purging of passions by the means of the dramatic representation: while attending a theatrical spectacle, the human being is released from its impulses, anguishes or phantasms by living them through the hero or the situations represented under its eyes. For Aristote the term is especially medical but he will be interpreted then like a moral purification. While being identified with characters whose guilty passions are punished by the destiny, the spectator of the Tragédie sees himself delivered, purged unavowable feelings which it can test secretly. The theater consequently has for the theorists of the classicism a moral value, an edifying function. More largely, the catharsis consists in being delivered of a still unavowed feeling.

Two dominant interpretations of the katharsis

The interpretation of this very allusive passage is delicate, and prone to many debates. The question relates in particular to the mode of purging which takes place: is it about a moral purging, or Aristote wants he simply to say that the mode of representation makes so that one does not feel these emotions with the first degree?

Between two interpretations, the difference carries:

on the stake of purging: in a case, it is about morals, in the other of the only esthetics;
on the causes purging: in a case they are the examples shown on the scene, in the other of the only device of the stage performance.

Historically, the moral interpretation of the katharsis was only defended a long time. Today, it is generally considered that purely esthetic interpretation is most correct.

Moral interpretation of the katharsis

In the traditional interpretation of the katharsis , it is a method of “purging of passions”, or emotional purification, using Spectacle S or tragic stories considered edifying. In Psychoanalysis, the catharsis is a concept used by Sigmund Freud to indicate the recall with the Conscience of a driven back idea.

Used in particular by the Cinema, the Theater and the Literature, it shows the tragic destiny of those which yielded to these impulses. By living these unhappy destinies by procuration, the spectators or readers are supposed to take in aversion passions which caused them. So that this catharsis is possible, is needed that the characters is in imitation ( mimêsis ) of human passions, the best example, for Aristote, being Oedipus King of Sophocle.

Cathartic duality and criminogene

The catharsis thus utilizes a representation of an act repressed (by the Morale, even by the Loi), and it is this representation which allows the spectator of “défouler”. One can however oppose the fact that the representation of the act can also inspire the spectator, to give him the idea to make the act, or can make the act acceptable: since it is represented in public, it is accepted by the assembly, by the company.

Thus, one can conceive that the representation can involve the passage to the act instead of preventing it, and that this representation is criminogene.

This debate on the cathartic duality and criminogene of the representation touches almost all the Médias, and in particular the Video games, the fictions diffused Télévision and the Roleplays.

Esthetic interpretation of the katharsis

Today, it is considered that the katharsis does not have a moral stake, but exclusively esthetic. The spectator does not purge his emotions by seeing edifying examples, but it is rather the scenic device, the mode of the representation, which purges the spectator of its emotions. The Man can “take pleasure with the representations”:

“we take pleasure to contemplate the most exact images of things of which the sight is painful for us in reality, like the shapes of the most scorned animals and of the corpses” (Aristote, Poétique , 1448b10).

Thus, for example, the spectator would be horrified by seeing a mother massacring his children, but it can assist, without moving of its seat, with a tragedy on Médée: it is that the theatrical device is enough to purge it emotions which it would have out of this device.

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