SECOND OPINION Patrick O'Dea I'm not the best at throwing things out, including ideas, even when they don't fit anymore. However, I'm learning. I've let go of "socialism" and currently I'm wondering what to do with the theory and practice of catharsis. It appears that I may have to face the prospect of "letting go" of a deeply felt and fundamentalist adherence to the practice and theory of catharsis.
This may not be your problem, dear reader, but it's mine and is a problem shared among a broad social scientific community, educated in the 1970s and now 50 years old. The psychology of "getting it off your chest, venting your problems" has slipped from its status as truth and that pains me and others for whom catharsis was, at least if not more than, an article of faith.
Catharsis is so 1970s, although I met it in the 1980s. Seekers and searchers "discovered" catharsis in their journey through counter culture. It lurked among the brown rice, left/liberal and feminist portfolio of ideas.
Proponents of catharsis made extravagant claims as to the transforming power of tears. I exaggerate. The thesis was, in fact, that emotional discharge, ventilation, catharsis (animated talking, crying, trembling, raging, laughing) could change not only me but also the world!
Catharsis could be put to revolutionary use apart from its use in its more usual therapeutic setting. A little reductionist, but you could be impressed! So there was the version of catharsis, practised by therapeutic professionals and then there was more ambitious catharsis, put to use by world changers.
An active listener, a scarce resource, was the only resource required. International networks of co-counsellors developed, trained and provided the listening/counselling resource accompanied by a world-changing agenda.
The mechanics were the same and couldn't be simpler. In summary, any person could recover from distress by use of the natural process of emotional discharge. That distress may have had its roots in experiences of personal loss, fear, pain, anger, embarrassment, etc. But much more importantly for "world changers", that experience may have arisen as a result of systematic oppression - hurt, shamed, angered, embarrassed for being poor, old, Catholic, Jew, Protestant, disabled, ill, traveller, male, female, gay or membership of whatever race.
So, in this way, catharsis had its political dimension and formed part of a personal liberation/recovery programme for many oppressed and oppressing groups. Irish travellers reconnected with feelings of pride in their heritage. Women discovered the power of anger, men of tears, working class grieved for having accepted very little and so on.
Powerlessness, low expectations, resentments were discharged and replaced by affirmed, validated personally powerful members and leaders of oppressed groups. Nice work!
My conversion and conviction to catharsis took root in an international co-counselling network, with dodgey political views, that have substantially failed the test of time. However, I was more than impressed at its ability to work with and understand private pain and its connection with systematic oppression and to think and work around both. It was simple, accessible and powerful, and had potential to make a transforming difference.
Social work counselling of the 1970s, in which I trained, also drew heavily from humanistic psychology. Intrinsic to that psychology too was a belief in the importance of the feeling level. An earlier generation of social workers might have placed emphasis on bleak theories of infantile development or instinctual explanations so favoured by Freud. But for the class of 1970, feelings were privileged.
Alas, "expressing your feelings" has ceased as orthodoxy. The 1990s decade swept catharsis aside. Catharsis, research suggested, was not the "cure all" that once had been believed.
Research has highlighted, for instance, that cognitive behavioural approaches are more effective to reduce re-offending than, for example, counselling, as described above. The focus of cognitive behavioural is on thought and behaviour, in contrast to feelings.
So catharsis is bunk, or at least overrated. That's official! The psychology of "getting it off your chest, venting your problems" is good enough, but only for radio phone-ins, daytime TV or behind closed doors.
That adjustment brought trauma to this author and to many for whom catharsis was at least an article of faith. Forgive the indulgence; it's just something I wanted off my chest!
Patrick O'Dea is a lecturer, school of social work and social policy, Trinity College Dublin. paodea@tcd.ie