DOES "CATHARSIS" REALLY WORK? (SPOILER ALERT: NO.)
Article by LiveReal Agents Blake and Grace
“Catharsis” is often seen as the key to psychological health.
Those who have learned how can spot it, hidden like a secret code, in all sorts of messages today.
“Let it out!”
“Get it off your chest!”
“Don’t bottle it up!”
It can lead to an epidemic of pillow abuse.
Certain therapies encourage their clients to punch pillows, scream into pillows, rip things apart, throw ice into innocent bathtubs while screaming, scream in forests, hang out in rage rooms, bang helpless cushions with tennis rackets, rage against the universe in general, pound mattresses that were just minding their own business, and so on. These activities often accompany exhaustive examinations and analyses of every minute strand of emotion, feeling, sensation, or sentiment.
The intentions behind this are fully admirable. They’re meant to heal people. These are forms of therapy that aim to build inner strength with the goal of overcoming suffering by way of self-knowledge.
Towards these ends, there’s a lot of “venting,” “releasing,” “expressing,” “discharging,” “purging,” “blowing off steam,” and so on.
All of this can be described as “catharsis.”
The core idea is that catharsis leads to psychological health.
It claims that repression is the key cause of a lack of psychological health.
According to this model, the unrepressed person is the healthiest.
If we don’t “let it out,” the thinking goes, we “lock the dogs in the basement.” We stay “repressed” – and eventually, those dogs will find another way out in less healthy avenues of expression.
The assumption is that unexpressed energies get trapped inside and fester, and if we don’t let them out, they’ll eventually manifest emotionally, or possibly even physically.
But does it work?
The idea, after all, is that all this catharting will eventually lead to more clarity, sanity, joy, peace of mind, health, happiness, etc.
Is that the case?
Sounds like a job for LiveReal.
The question boils down to this: does catharsis really work?
Instead of relying on a few clever ideas, a few psychologists decided to test them and find out.
The results they almost universally found?
In a single word: no.
The catharsis model of psychological health doesn’t work.
With hindsight, these results probably aren’t surprising.
After all, if it did work, our overall psychological health as a group would probably be in better shape.
Part of the reason here lies in one of the core assumptions of the catharsis model: that mere repression is the key driving force behind misery.
But that “experiment” has been run on a widespread, population-level scale. In some ways, modern Western societies may be the most “unrepressed” cultures that have existed in the history of the world.
By that measure, we should be thriving.
Yet again, we aren’t.
(Of course, some might say this means we need more catharsis. Psychological theories often tend toward circular logic. Practitioners of various therapies rarely want to believe that their methods are ineffective. It takes rare humility and honesty for someone to commit to a course (such as the path of catharsis), discover that it’s ineffective at least, and change course.)
But good science (and therapy) involves honesty and a commitment to truth, even when the results aren’t comfortable, flattering, or affirming, and which means we can ask tough, sometimes unsettling questions.
How do we know catharsis doesn’t work?
Again, psychologists have gone to no small amount of trouble to test the catharsis model.
Brad Bushman, for example, led experiments demonstrating that expressing anger aggressively or through venting (yelling, punching bags, etc.) typically doesn’t reduce anger; it maintains or even increases it. Instead of dissipating anger, they found that individuals venting their anger reported feeling more angry, not less. Punching can actually keep angry thoughts, resentments, and various forms of agitating rehearsal, and rumination active and engaged. (1(opens in new tab))
What did they find works better, at least in the short term?
Physical factors (breathing, a splash of cold water, leaving a situation), thinking (aka "cognitive reappraisal"), reducing ruminations, acting gently ("opposite action" or "DBT" (dialectical behavior therapy)) or even...doing nothing. (2(opens in new tab)2)
Other studies reached similar conclusions.
For example, Geen & Quanty also found that expressing aggression does not reliably lead to peace and tranquility, but can lead to more aggression. (3(opens in new ta)
The evidence (or lack of it) has accumulated. Additional meta-analyses (2024) reviewed 154 studies involving over 10,000 participants and again found “little to no evidence that venting helps,” and that it leads to more anger instead of less. (4)
Bushman himself said, "I think it's really important to bust the myth that if you're angry you should blow off steam - get it off your chest...Venting anger might sound like a good idea, but there's not a shred of scientific evidence to support catharsis theory." (5(opens in new tab33))
Granted, those studies might not have captured the heart of it.
Simulating the genuine dynamics of effective therapy in a laboratory setting is no easy task.
It’s like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. Real life is unrehearsed, fluid, and dynamic. As much as science tries to capture things, fix them, and pin them down, the live-action realities of real life often escape its grasp.
The above test results don’t mean the catharsis approach is a total illusion, or that there’s absolutely nothing to it.
It just means that things might be more complex.
On a popular, widespread level, we’re often served a bumper-sticker, shrink-wrapped, fly-by version of catharsis.
Maybe we can’t emote our way to psychological health. But that doesn’t mean psychological health is out of reach, or that emotions aren’t involved.
There wouldn't be phony catharsis without real catharsis.
After all, why is catharsis so popular?
If it doesn’t work, why is it so pervasive?
A brief history of the idea can explain a lot.
Like many things, it generally started with Aristotle. He was among the first to offer insights into how drama and effective storytelling work. Good drama, he described, generates catharsis, which he described as a “purging or cleansing of emotions like pity and fear” in the audience. These ideas are still influential today.
Much later came Freud, who – along with Breuer – in Studies on Hysteria (1895) proposed that repressed emotions (especially from trauma) become “strangulated,” causing symptoms that can be relieved through a “talking cure” (abreaction). They relied heavily on a metaphor of the steam-boiler or hydraulics, which portrays emotions as a fluid or energy that builds up under pressure inside a closed system (like a pressure cooker). If it isn’t released or discharged, the pressure accumulates and risks “explosion.”
This “pressure cooker” metaphor of emotion is catchy.
But it’s inaccurate. Serious psychologists have largely abandoned it. Its stickiness, however, and the lack of anything to replace it, has led to a lingering, widespread cultural popularity.
This basic model ignite the “human potential movement” in the 1960s-70s. This gave rise to a multitude of therapies and approaches – from various forms of psychoanalysis to Gestalt therapy, primal screams, encounter groups, and various types of groups and cults. Healing and catharsis became a full-blown cultural movement.
If simply “overthrowing repression” worked, those movements would have yielded widespread health, healing, sanity, and a vibrant, wholesome vitality. (And in specific, individual cases, they might have.)
But those movements largely evaporated.
Yet they live on in highly sanitized, watered-down forms. The catharsis model continually rears its head in popular culture and private therapy sessions. “Be yourself” and “you do you” are its much tamer successors. The dominant ethic on many cultural fronts is to “Follow your heart!” (“Heart” in this context often refers not to the deeper Self, conscience, or capital H “Heart,” but the personal emotions (or the seat of “ego.”)
The problem, ultimately, can seem to boil down to a pop psychology version of Hamlet: “To cathart, or not to cathart, that is the question.” It seems to form a dilemma: if expressing is wrong, and repressing is also wrong, what’s left?
The solution is the larger framework the catharsis idea rests on.
The catharsis idea rests on a broader model of human nature.
Pop-catharsis is the tip of an iceberg, and the solution lies in the parts of the iceberg that are usually under the surface. The models themselves often operate in the background – invisible, unstated, merely implied – like the operating system of a computer. Along those lines, each model reflects a broader worldview or life philosophy.
Again, the catharsis model assumes that unexpressed emotion is the cause of psychological distress. This model rests on a larger worldview. That worldview is materialism, where only physical, biological, and cultural forces exist. In this worldview, we’re simply mammals with the ability to repress ourselves. Psychological health and happiness simply consist of being a good animal and maximizing creature comforts, and our oversized brains (via repression) get in the way.
But that approach has two critical problems.
One is the foundational weaknesses of materialism as a worldview.
The other is that we no longer live in Victorian England. The Council of Elders from Dead Poet’s Society or the stodgy parents from Footloose are no longer in charge. Instead of oppressively strong social norms, our problem is more likely to be a lack of social norms, or a thousand conflicting social norms – or even the worst of both: an oppressive lack of norms, where multiple worldviews exist in an ongoing, constant, churning state of chronic collision.
It might be true that we’re “repressed” in some ways.
But this idea also relies on a deeper view of the iceberg – namely: what have we repressed, exactly?
What lies at the bottom of the unconscious?
Is it merely unexpressed feelings?
Or could it be something larger?
Most ideas that survive along these lines contain at least a grain of truth.
The catharsis model is no exception.
When a deep, dark secret is exposed, for example, a side effect is often a sense of genuine relief.
Aristotle, as usual, was onto something. The live wire of feeling that gets touched, stirred, and built to a crescendo in good stories, films, and songs, for example, can be profound. It can elevate or deepen someone to entirely new perspectives or insights.
Other forms of “letting it out” validate the core intuition. Unspoken (and unhelpful) rules can be made explicit, dormant talents can be utilized, or unused potentials can be actualized. All of this can lead to a clarity and an exhilarating sense of “rightness.”
Watered-down forms of catharsis can point toward a real form.
Imagine an underground movement against an oppressive totalitarian political regime, for example, Stalin’s Russia or Cambodia under communism. If that underground movement succeeded in overthrowing the oppressive political rulers, the result would be a genuine spiritual victory. That would be a positive state of “freedom from repression.” A higher level of psychological health (for lack of better words) would likely ensue.
“Pop-catharsis,” on the other hand, would be more like a single protest. Someone might go outside and scream a few slogans, but nothing on a larger scale would change. If it were an iceberg, it would only touch the tip.
That type of catharsis doesn’t provide the promised relief.
Then what is the alternative?
Should we resign to “being repressed”?
Is the only alternative to go into lockdown and become dry, stiff, and stoic?
The choice, of course, isn’t an either/or.
There seems to be a better way.
At first, it might seem that there are only two imperfect alternatives: full, unfiltered expression on the one hand, and full repression on the other. It’s either hysteria or stoicism, wild emotionality or cold, clinical intellectuality. It’s either Spock or Wolverine.
It’s a form of the classic “passion vs reason” debate, or “emotion vs thought,” or “feeling vs thinking, etc.
As usual in cases like these, the solution lies in adopting the value from both sides and leaving the rest.
It looks more like gardening.
A healthy garden doesn’t mean simply “letting the garden go” and letting nature do what it does.
When that happens, weeds overrun the garden. Mindless tolerance of letting nature do its thing results in mere underbrush. Roses, tulips, or tomato plants don’t thrive in that environment; they’re choked out and overrun. The same is true of virtues, talents, and individuality.
In this sense, the gardener isn’t a “repressive” force that keeps the garden repressed. Gardens don’t thrive without a gardener, where everything is permitted. Gardens need a skillful gardener.
Catharsis seems to relieve tension temporarily.
But that “tension” might be a healthy dynamic between of two opposing forces.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence
is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time
and still retain the ability to function.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Knocking out the legs of one opposing force might offer temporary relief. But that “solution” could be like overthrowing a chessboard instead of playing the game. The more difficult but effective route involves staying with the tension and resolving it.
Like gardening, emotions aren’t merely mechanical, like steam engines operating through pressure. They involve not just physics and mechanics, but biology, which deals with living things. Regarding catharsis, effective solutions involve both emotion and intellect.
The psychologists who have studied this seem to agree here.
Researchers have repeatedly emphasized that it isn’t mere emotional release that heals. It’s “adaptive emotional processing and disclosure,” often combined with insight, reduced avoidance, better coping, or social support.
In other words, it’s not just emotional, but intellectual, behavioral, and social. It approaches the initial sensations at the root causes of emotions, focusing on what happens further upstream, before feelings arise (that then seem to need to be either expressed or suppressed), at the level of perception. (This is also the level of ideas.)
It also takes effort. Instead of “letting it all out,” evidence-supported approaches prioritize “regulation skills,” problem-solving, more adaptive forms of expression, understanding triggers, cognitive or intellectual work, and “constructive action” (aka doing or not doing certain things) over mere venting alone.
Activities that reduce arousal—deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, mindfulness, meditation, yoga, etc can also be effective.
These matters all touch on a deeper truth.
Many of us sense that we “aren’t fully ourselves.” We have an intuition that there is some sort of “deeper self” in us, that there are parts of our selves that haven’t become fully activated yet. We feel like some aspects of ourselves seem dormant, asleep, as if we have innate potentials that haven’t yet been realized.
We also sense that something blocks access to that deeper Self.
As Herman Hesse said more simply:
“I wanted only to live in accord with
the promptings which came from my true self.
Why was that so very difficult?”
There can seem to be obstacles to “being ourselves.”
This intuition that something gets in the way of us being ourselves – seemingly a near-universal experience – might be completely accurate.
The intention behind the effort to “purge,” “cathart,” or get rid of that “obstacle” might be aiming in exactly the right direction.
But that alone apparently isn’t enough.
We seem to need something stronger.
Again, mere emoting or “blowing off steam” not working indicates a need for a better approach – one that’s better equipped to handle the complexity of the situation.
“Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.”
- G. K. Chesterton
Pop-catharsis might be an imitation of real catharsis.
And what is “real catharsis”?
Perhaps Zen offers a glimpse:
“A light contact with a taut wire, and behold, an explosion which shakes the Earth to its foundations; everything that lies hidden in the spirit bursts forth like a volcanic eruption or explodes like a clap of thunder.”
As Hubert Benoit explains, “Zen calls that ‘to return home.’ ‘You have found yourself now.’”
In this sense, catharsis can be a crude, raw, beta-test-level effort at spiritual awakening or becoming oneself - things more aligned with spiritual experiments or contemplative practice and part of a larger "way of life."
In this sense, the catharsis model isn’t inherently and comprehensively wrong; it only becomes wrong when it's used as a sole technique in isolation as The Path to mental health (while mental health is actually an Everything Problem) - or when it becomes “The” Model of human nature and “The” Solution to the human predicament.
It’s the dynamic that always occurs when a part is treated as the whole.
When you treat a fragment as the whole, the fragment stops doing its job, and the whole becomes dysfunctional. The solution is for the fragment to do its specific job within the greater whole. The heart doesn’t try to do the stomach’s job, and the stomach doesn’t try to pump blood through the body.
That’s a major difference between our humanity’s tangled mass of psychological theories and something that is actually well-designed and works, like the human body. Psychological theories – Behaviorism, psychoanalysis, cognitive-behavioral approaches, etc. – can work in specific ways under specific circumstances – yet they often expand to try to explain everything. And that’s when they fail.
Pillow abuse might work at specific times to handle spillover.
But it isn’t primary.
It doesn’t tell the whole story, only a few scenes.
The popularity of the catharsis model points toward something important.
It points toward the need for a better model of human nature.
And that, dear reader, is something your lovable LiveReal Agents are in search of. Trying to navigate life using half-baked models of human nature creates a lot of unnecessary suffering. An accurate map of the territory can bypass a lot of misery, and not just for innocent pillows.
Just wanted to get that off our chests.