Catharsis
The concept of emotional purification through experiencing pity and fear in Greek tragedy.
The Meaning of Catharsis
Aristotle gave catharsis its enduring definition in the Poetics: tragedy, through arousing pity and fear, achieves the catharsis of such emotions. What exactly he meant has been debated for twenty-three centuries. The word itself predates Aristotle — katharsis was a medical term for purging the body of harmful substances and a religious term for ritual purification after contact with pollution. A murderer needed catharsis before re-entering society. A woman needed catharsis after childbirth. A city needed catharsis after plague. Aristotle appears to have combined both senses. Watching Oedipus discover his crimes or Medea murder her children, the audience experiences intense emotion in a controlled setting, and leaves the theatre somehow cleansed. The Pythagoreans had already claimed that music could produce catharsis of the soul. Greek healing sanctuaries used drama as therapy — the theatre at Epidaurus was built next to the temple of Asclepius. The concept passed through Roman rhetoric, Christian confession, and Freudian psychoanalysis, each tradition adapting the same Greek insight.
Parents
Greek tragic tradition
Symbols
Fun Fact
Freud borrowed catharsis directly from Aristotle — his early "cathartic method" of therapy was explicitly modelled on the Greek tragic experience.
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
Explore Further
Katharsis
💭 conceptPurification and emotional release
Katharsis was both a ritual purification from miasma and — in Aristotle's famous definition — the emotional cleansing that tragedy performs on its audience.
Catharsis
💭 conceptEmotional purification through art
Aristotle's concept that tragedy purifies the audience by arousing and then releasing pity and fear.
Miasma
💭 conceptSpiritual pollution from bloodshed
The concept of ritual pollution caused by murder, contact with death, or moral transgression that required purification.
Pathos
💭 conceptRhetoric and Emotion
The Greek rhetorical appeal to emotion, one of Aristotle's three modes of persuasion.
Eleos
💭 conceptEthics and Emotion
The Greek concept of mercy and compassion, personified as a god and central to Athenian civic identity.
Ekstasis
💭 conceptReligion and Mysticism
The experience of standing outside oneself, the Greek term for mystical transport and altered consciousness.
Elysian
💭 conceptLanguage and the afterlife
An English adjective meaning blissful, heavenly, or supremely happy, derived from the Elysian Fields, the paradise in the Greek underworld reserved for heroes and the virtuous
Enthousiasmos
💭 conceptReligion and Inspiration
The state of being possessed by a god, the original meaning of divine inspiration in Greek religion.
Orphic Mysteries
💭 conceptreligion, afterlife
An initiatory religious tradition attributed to the mythical poet Orpheus, teaching reincarnation, ritual purity, and liberation of the soul through sacred texts and ascetic practices.
Psyche
💭 conceptThe breath-soul that animates and survives death
The Greek concept of the soul — originally meaning breath, it evolved to encompass mind, self, and the immortal essence.
Pharmakos
💭 conceptreligion, ritual
The scapegoat — a person selected to carry the community's pollution and be driven out or ritually sacrificed to purify the city.
Tragedy
💭 conceptLanguage and drama
An English word for a serious dramatic work ending in suffering, derived from the Greek tragodia meaning "goat song," possibly referring to the goat sacrificed to Dionysus or awarded as a prize