- the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.
- purgation.
- Psychiatry.
- psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of pent-up, socially unacceptable affects.
- discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.
- (in Aristotelian literary criticism) the purging or purification of the emotions through the evocation of pity and fear, as in tragedy
- the bringing of repressed ideas or experiences into consciousness, thus relieving tensions
- purgation, esp of the bowels
