Emotional discharge whereby the subject liberates himself from the affect* attached to the memory of a traumatic event in such a way that this affect is not able to become (or to remain) pathogenic. Abreaction may be provoked in the course of psychotherapy, especially under hypnosis, and produce a cathartic* effect. It may also come about spontaneously, either a short or a long interval after the original trauma*.
Ideas* (or presentation or representation): Classical term in philosophy and psychology for 'that which one represents to oneself, that which forms the concrete content of an act of thought', and 'in particular the reproduction of an earlier perception' (1). Freud contrasts the idea with the affect*: these two elements suffer distinct fates in psychical processes.
cathartic method* (or therapy): Method of psychotherapy in which the therapeutic effect sought is 'purgative': an adequate discharge of pathogenic affects. The treatment allows the patient to evoke and even to relive the traumatic events to which these affects are bound, and to abreact them.
Historically, the cathartic method belongs to a period (1880-95) during which psycho-analytic therapeutics were gradually emerging from a type of treatment carried out under hypnosis.
catharsis*: The desired result of an adequate abreaction* of a trauma* (S.E.,II, 8.)
['Catharsis' is a Greek word meaning purification or purging.]
trauma*: An event in the subject's life defined by its intensity, by the subject's incapacity to respond adequately to it, and by the upheaval and long-lasting effects that it brings about in the psychical organisation.
In economic terms, the trauma is characterised by an influx of excitations that is excessive by the standard of the subject's tolerance and capacity to master such excitations and work them out psychically.
(Arlen Wolpert: Obviously a book could be written on each of these definitions.)
June 29,2005
http://theworld.com/~awolpert/gtr517.html