catharsis
IPA: kʌθˈɑrsʌs
noun
- (drama) A release of emotional tension after an overwhelming vicarious experience, resulting in the purging or purification of the emotions, as through watching a dramatic production (especially a tragedy).
- Any release of emotional tension to the same effect, more widely.
- A purification or cleansing, especially emotional.
- (psychology) A therapeutic technique to relieve tension by re-establishing the association of an emotion with the memory or idea of the event that first caused it, and then eliminating it by complete expression (called the abreaction).
- (medicine) Purging of the digestive system.
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Examples of "catharsis" in Sentences
- No, for me, crying used to be catharsis of the negative.
- This gives us the catharsis of vengeance and indignation.
- I'm dropping this into the web page as a sort of catharsis.
- The film did not provide me with fulfillment or a catharsis.
- Catharsis was formed in 1994 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
- This was a purification ritual, a form of societal catharsis.
- Losing the self through the dionysian catharsis of cataclysmic noise.
- Collective Catharsis is, as the term itself suggests, a group cleansing.
- Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self annulment.
- It discusses violence as a means of liberation and a catharsis to subjugation.
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