catharsis

[Adam Blatner]

Contemplation on Catharsis

    For many years I didn't get Aristotle's theory of catharsis, but two ideas have come together to explain it so that maybe I do get it. 
          1. People live toned-down lives, operating in a range of civilized modulation, between extremes of emotions. Except for the few drama queens and histrionic character disorders, most folks don't indulge in rage, total humiliation (with all the nonverbal elements expressed in generous fullness), horror, fear, disgust, triumph, smarmy sarcasm (with open child-like face), deep mea-culpa guilt, and so forth. (I'm rehearsing for a play right now for our community theatre, my being in the role of LInus in the Broadway 1968 play, "You're a good man, Charlie Brown," --- a take-off on the Peanuts cartoon strips... and I go through a variety of emotions---and need to exaggerate them for the audience to appreciate.. and it's fun. And I realized that exaggerating emotions---that's the key---having a context where I can get panicked (if I'm away from my security blanket) or etc. --- well, I get into it. The behavior arouses the emotion. And afterwards there's a funny feeling of having emptied myself a little. 

       2. What feeds into this theory is another one: That people accumulate low to medium and often tiny doses of guilt, shame, annoyance, and other components of "burden" the way they accumulate dental plaque (see my paper on my website about what that's about and why we really need to floss every 24 hours!). An experience of vivid emotion often helps to clear the system somewhat the way flossing breaks up the plaque, or closing down your computer every several days cleans off a lot of the residual memory that you didn't need and frees up the computer system to work better (did you know that?) . 

     3. So a measure of drama and catharsis, in addition to its functions (as I've written about them in the journal in 1985 and in Foundations of Psychodrama 4th ed 2000,) is simply a kind of stretching, workout, what a good exercise does if you've been sort of sedentary. 

    Thoughts? 





Adam Blatner, M.D.
   website: www.blatner.com/adam/   
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