Outcome of brief cathartic psychotherapy.

Abstract

The present study evaluated the impact of catharsis on the outcome of brief psychotherapy. A group of University Health Service patients was treated with emotive psychotherapy and compared with another group, treated with insight-oriented analytic therapy. Outcome data consisted of change on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory scales of Depression, Psychasthenia, and Schizophrenia; change in comfort with affect, measured by Hamsher's Test of Emotional Styles; ratings of change in personal satisfaction; and progress toward behaviorally defined goals. The emotive group experienced significantly more catharsis, and high-catharsis patients changed significantly more on behavioral goals and showed a trend toward greater improvement in personal satisfaction. The findings confirmed the effectiveness of emotive psychotherapy in producing catharsis and tended to validate the hypothesis that catharsis leads to therapeutic improvement.

The Effects of Behavioral Inhibition: Integrating Internal Cues, Cognition, Behavior, and Affect

“…Other motivational theorists such as MacDougall (1908), Lewin (1936), Murray (1938), and Atkinson (1957, 1974 all linked instinctive and learned goal seeking with behavior and emotion. Apart from Freud, none of these previous theorists (or the many others who have addressed similar issues) focused particular attention on the outcomes of voluntary suppression of these motivated activities or of substitution (particularly by conscious decision) of an alternative behavioral response.…”

“…The extensive literature on catharsis of emotions suggests that expressing emotions might be beneficial (e.g., Greenberg & Safran, 1987;Nichols, 1974;Nichols & Zax, 1977;Quanty, 1976;Scheff, 1979), and repressing them might be harmful (see, e.g., Pennebaker, 1985, 1990, or Pennebaker & Francis, 1996, for reviews; although see Lewis and Bucher, 1992, for an opposing view). Freud's (Strachey, 1955) psychoanalytic therapy was predicated on his belief that releasing the "strangulated affect" associated with repressed traumas through his "cathartic method" would relieve his patients' mental disorders (Breuer & Freud, 189511955).…”

What is it about Revealing Secrets that is Beneficial?

“…As the survivors related their previously suppressed stories to the researchers, their skin-conductance levels fell, indicating that they became more relaxed (Pennebaker et al, 1989;Shortt & Pennebaker, 1992). Furthermore, an experiment conducted at a university clinic showed that student outpatients who received cathartic psychotherapy as compared with those who received insight-oriented psychotherapy reported greater improvement on a measure of their personal satisfaction covering eight areas of college life (Nichols, 1974). However, in that same experiment, the outpatients who received insight-oriented therapy had a greater reduction in self-reported symptomatology.…”

An Outcome Study of Primal Therapy

“…which is related to catharsis. Nichols [5] found a better outcome in patients treated with a cathartic technique than in patients treated without such a technique. Our study does not study process variables, but it gives support to the notion that systematic catharsis can be an important factor for per sonality change in neurotic patients.…”

“…Janov's [2-4] primal therapy is one of these forms, which has been claimed unique in technique and efficiency. There are very few reports on controlled studies of cathartic forms of psychotherapy [1]; however, one comparative study claims better results with a cathartic technique in brief psychotherapy [5].A fair evaluation of primal therapy in relation to accepted knowledge in the field seems timely. Such an evaluation should at least cover three areas: (1) investigation of theoretical assumptions; (2) examination of reported treatment experiences, and (3) systematic prospective studies of outcome with patient groups whose prognosis in other treatments has been investigated.…”