You know cathartic method Many areas of knowledge use some method in order to provoke catharsis, for example, psychoanalysis and modern medicine, but the difference is in how each one uses it, and how it offers results to its patients. Are you interested? Keep following our article and find out how psychoanalysis defines and uses the cathartic method!

The meaning of catharsis

In classical art and Aristotle's theory of art, catharsis means a great revelation brought about by an artistic work, usually by way of the pathos (a passion or strong feeling brought on by the work of art).

More than a century after its creation in Psychoanalysis, we continue to be concerned with the cathartic method. According to Aristotle, a play has the ability to free us from our passions through the representation of the character. To relive the traumatic events, and make connections between them, causes purification and cleansing in our psychic life. This exteriorization can happen verbally, emotionally, and through actions, which for Aristotle would be a catharsis.

Thus, the catharsis is identified with the idea of a strong discharge of emotion that brings a deep learning about the human condition, it is an indirect rationalization that starts from an experience or an emotion, to then reveal itself as learning.

Beyond the arts and literary criticism, these ideas would be used in other areas of knowledge, such as psychoanalysis. However, the concept of catharsis is somewhat different in the arts compared to the context of psychoanalysis, which we will see below.

How the cathartic method works for Freud

The cathartic method is considered by many scholars to be a transition between hypnotic suggestion and free association (the latter, Freud's definitive method). Other scholars consider it to be the same (or almost the same) method as hypnotic suggestion.

O cathartic method can be seen in the case of the patient portrayed in the film "Freud, Beyond the Soul", which basically takes up the Anna O.'s case It is also the method used by Freud in the "Studies on Hysteria" (Freud & Breuer, 1895). Miss Lucy R. case reported in the same work.

As in hypnotic suggestion, in the cathartic method the idea that the analyst suggests the patient (or analisand) continues, but not in the sense of suggesting that the patient gets better. But rather that the patient relives a traumatic event that is the basis of psychic pain or of the pathogenic affections (that is, the emotions that link the patient to the first moments that would have originated his malaise).

By this method, the strong emotional discharge (catharsis) of reliving this traumatic event would allow them to overcome it.

One technique applied in the cathartic method, with the objective of simulating the hypnotic state and expanding consciousness, would be the so-called pressure technique Freud pressed his fingers to the patient's forehead and asked him, with his eyes closed, to concentrate in order to recover the apparently lost memory.

Comparing Freudian methods

This same method is also used in a relative way in other areas of knowledge, for example in modern medicine, where the concept is associated with the digestive system, and indicates the emptying of the intestine of what is causing it harm.

According to Laplanche and Pontalis,

At its inception, the cathartic method was closely linked to hypnosis. But hypnotism soon ceased to be used by Freud as a process designed to directly bring about the suppression of the symptom through the suggestion that the symptom does not exist. It was instead used to induce re-membering by reintroducing into the field of consciousness experiences underlying the symptoms but forgotten,"(Vocabulary of Psychoanalysis, p. 61)

Such memories evoked or even relived with intense dramatic vividness give the subject the opportunity to express himself. That is, the subject can discharge the affections that were initially attached to the traumatizing experience and that were repressed.

The procedure of the cathartic method It does not aim to cure the symptoms, but to find out what they have to say. In psychoanalysis, this method gains strength when Freud refuses the hypnotic method that Josef Breuer With free association, the cathartic method is created.

Furthermore, the method continues to be employed for those who seek psychoanalysis, which for Sigmund Freud is the cure through speech, and therefore has the objective of birthing what is hidden in the human unconscious, in order to purge it. That is, to bring out and even annul the pathogenic effects, which are recalcitrant emotions that were prevented from being manifested.

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In short, we can point to three major methods of psychoanalysis used by Freud:

• Method of Hypnotic Suggestion It was used by Freud in the early phase of his career, together with Charcot, although Freud later advocated that hypnotic suggestion by the analyst was not necessary.
• Cathartic Method In a way, the analyst has an active role (as in hypnotic suggestion) of leading the analyzed through an emotional journey. This method combined the pressure technique (which we will explain below) and was used by Freud as a result of his work with Josef Breuer.
• Free Association Method This is Freud's method par excellence and is related to the origin of psychoanalysis itself. It is about allowing the analyzed to say everything that comes to mind, without censorship. In free association, it is up to the analyst to interrelate the facts brought and discuss with the analyzed what this may indicate about beliefs, values and events of the unconscious. From this stems the need for manytherapy sessions, because the pace is determined by the patient, in a relationship of comings and goings of resistances, transferences, and countertransferences.

Freud's phases with hypnotic suggestion and cathartic method do not, in our view, represent such sensitive differences. Perhaps the main differences are that, in this context,

• Difference 1 Catharsis would be a similar state, but perhaps not as deep as hypnosis,
• Difference 2 : besides the fact that the pressure technique is often correlated to the cathartic method.
• Similarities The "suggestive" aspect as the source of the patient's improvement is present in both the hypnotic suggestion phase and the cathartic method.

In our view, the main distinction that the student of psychoanalysis has to make is between this early moment of Freud's and the moment of psychoanalysis proper, which begins with free association.

The cathartic method in psychoanalysis

Josef Breuer's cathartic method is based on hypnosis and hypnotic suggestion. It was gradually

The method of free association, in which hypnotic suggestion and the technique of pressure ceased to be relevant.

In developing with Breuer and applying the cathartic method, Freud runs into some limitations:

• Freud realized that not all of his patients were hypnotizable or influenced by emotion;
• Freud perceived the difficulty in achieving an effective "cure" condition; this was because the cathartic method worked only with the symptoms and not the etiology of neurosis (that is, he did not study the original reasons for neuroses).

After abandoning hypnosis, Freud begins to use pressure technique It consisted in pressing with your thumb on the patient's forehead and asking him, with his eyes closed, to concentrate in order to recover the lost memory.

The pressure technique simulated the hypnotic state, which at this stage of Freudian theorizing was seen as a

way of expanding consciousness.

In this way, the construction of the psychoanalytic method goes through the phases of hypnotic suggestion, the cathartic method, and, finally, would firm itself in the more gradual and dialogical therapy of free association.

To summarize in one paragraph this passage of Freud from (1) hypnosis to (2) cathartic method and finally to (3) free association:

Freud quickly renounced to (1) hypnosis proper, replacing it by the simple (2) suggestion (aided by a technical artifice: a pressure with the hand on the patient's forehead), aimed at convincing the patient that he would rediscover the pathogenic memory. Finally, he stopped using suggestion, relying simply on the (3) free associations of the patient (Laplanche and Pontalis, p.61).

Philosophy and the cathartic method

In Psychology, the term is related to freedom and healing of traumas, fears and illnesses The method is used with the aim of making the patient free of these psychic disturbances.

A Philosophy has a perspective on psychoanalysis, because it is also a work of representation that submits itself to doubt and uncertainty in the same theoretical mode. In it, each one wants to affirm its own perspectives that remain in obscurity. In thinking of psychoanalysis as midwife On and under this effect of estrangement, analyzing them, she approaches what can be considered a philosophical activity.

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Moreover, in philosophy, the cathartic effect was already generated through the revelations achieved through dialogue Socratic It means being able to discern right from wrong, when thought is released through speech.

Finally, to Aristotle This Aristotelian theory, present in his Poetics, has inspired (and still inspires today) the theories of the arts and artists.

Catharsis and Freud

Along with this, the Freudian cathartic method is specific to the psychoanalytic analyst, who seeks to discover and patiently dismantle all the armor of the unconscious. Freud formulated the cathartic method when treating patients with hysteria, after he heard from a friend about Aristotelian catharsis.

The cathartic method has its origin in listening to the suffering subject. And, acting in this way, Freud creates a privileged method for psychoanalytic knowledge. This method of healing through speech initiates the trajectory of psychoanalysis, in which Breuer and Freud recognized verbal expression:

"It is in language that man finds a substitute for the act, thanks to which affection can be ab-reacted to in almost the same way."

Thus, the act can be replaced by language, allowing relationships and our affections to be understood through words. Furthermore, thought and language, even though they are of a different order, are what give meaning to linguistic expressions. Thus, for Freud, language is a necessary phenomenon for human reality, psychoanalysis would be a cure through words.

Based on this, it is evident the importance and effectiveness that the cathartic method has in therapeutic treatment. This in a process of transformation in the psychic life of people.

Conclusion on the cathartic method in psychoanalysis

In short, understanding what Psychoanalysis is means understanding the therapeutic methods that psychoanalysis used: hypnotic suggestion, catharsis and free association .

Thus, for example, when it comes to psychoanalysis, in the cathartic method, the analyst is attentive to the patient's speech in order to extract and open an avenue for repressed thoughts, and thus achieve emotional healing.

From the importance of cathartic method presented in the different areas of knowledge, we can observe that it is one of the best methods used by psychoanalysis. For the psychic balance, in a state of liberation from traumas and other disturbances that the human being experiences, it gives the individual liberation through speech, which is the means by which these affections are eliminated.

This is a very broad concept, since it is used in several branches of knowledge for the exercise of catharsis. Did you like this article and are interested in issues related to psychoanalysis? Follow our blog and enroll in our course, 100% online, which will make you a successful psychoanalyst! Our course is complete and enables you to practice!