Catharsis (from the Greek. Catharsis - purification) is a strong emotional shock that is caused not by real life events, but by their symbolic display, for example, in a work of art. The term was introduced into psychology and psychoanalysis from ancient tragedy.
Emotional relief; mystical cleansing of the soul from the dirt of sensuality, corporality; one of the goals and one of the consequences of the tragedy (according to Aristotle, the goal of the tragedy is to perform catharsis of the soul, "purification of passions", or rather, "purification from passions", namely, "arousal of compassion and fear"). - Purification, which is likened to aesthetic satisfaction, associated with the work of the imagination and the creation of illusion.
Internal shock, enlightenment and indescribable spiritual pleasure, which characterize the state of catharsis and are in many ways close to the states of mystical ecstasy, as stages on the paths of mystical experience, testify to a deeper spiritual experience than psychophysiological processes in a person, high emotional states or intentions to social moral improvement. Along with all these accompanying moments, the very essence of aesthetic experience is expressed in catharsis as one of the ways of introducing a person to the spiritual universe.
Catharsis is a real evidence of the realization in the process of aesthetic perception of the contact between man and pleroma (pleroma in translation from ancient Greek means the completeness, harmony of the world, where there is no death and darkness) of spiritual being, the essential basis of the cosmos.
The fundamental refusal of postculture (second half of the 20th century) from the aesthetic in principle, from the artistic and aesthetic dimension in art (in modern practices) also closes the cathartic path to the spheres of the Spirit for its subjects, a breakthrough in the material shell of being, for which postculture itself and does not pretend, limiting its ontological space to body and corporeality, thing and thingness. It follows from this that post-culture does not provide an opportunity for experiencing catharsis, in contrast to the culture of an earlier time.