Who Coined the Term Catharsis?

The term has been in use since the time of the Ancient Greeks, but it was Sigmund Freud's colleague Josef Breuer

who was the first to use the term to describe a therapeutic technique. 1 Breuer developed what he referred to as a "cathartic" treatment for hysteria.

Where does Aristotle talk about catharsis?

The word catharsis drops out of the Poetics because the word wonder, to rhaumaston, replaces it, first in chapter 9, where Aristotle argues that pity and fear arise most of all where wonder does, and finally in chapters 24 and 25, where he singles out wonder as the aim of the poetic art itself, into which the aim of ...

Did Aristotle create catharsis?

Catharsis, meaning “cleansing” in Greek, refers to a literary theory first developed by the philosopher Aristotle, who believed that cleansing our emotions was the purpose of a good story, especially a tragedy.