(click/touch triangles for details)
Definition
purging of emotional tensionsMuch more rarely, catharsis can reference purging the body by the use of a cathartic to stimulate evacuation of the bowels.
- Inevitable catharsis by the threads of chaos.Thomas Wolfe -- Look Homeward, Angel
- The idea of suicide worked on me like a purgative or a cathartic.Susanna Kaysen -- Girl Interrupted
- After a time, I came to think that visiting memorials was in part a willed catharsis.Tracy Kidder -- Strength in What Remains
- To free itself totally, to revenge itself, to work its ultimate catharsis, it resolves to seek them out and destroy them.Roger Zelazny -- My Name is Legion
- I hope for some sort of cathartic release, but there isn't one.Pittacus Lore -- I Am Number Four
- Then, there in the middle of the communal catharsis, I found it: a public apology from the young driver, Jamie Bardol.John Grogan -- Marley & Me
- We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, more than books of political science, or of private economy.Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Selected Essays
- The "cathartic" was drastic, as Loyalist Peter Oliver observed.David G. McCullough -- 1776
- The experience, she said, was cathartic.Warren St. John -- Outcasts United
- Her catharsis is absolutely tremendous-ha, ha!Ralph Ellison -- Invisible Man
- It was cathartic and constructive and destructive and perfect.Katja Millay -- The Sea of Tranquility
- The catharsis ended the moment Alex handed the cashier her credit card and heard Logan Rourke's voice in her mind.Jodi Picoult -- Nineteen Minutes
- There are two kinds of M.D.'s— those to whom c. c. means cubic centimeter and those to whom it means compound cathartic.Sinclair Lewis -- Arrowsmith
- It was very cathartic for a lot of people, myself included.Gayle Forman -- Where She Went
- Writing about my violent gang life, the drug addictions, the rages and fears proved to he risky and extremely difficult, but deeply cathartic.Luis J. Rodriguez -- Always Running
- Moreover, I agree that readers are often poorly served when an author writes as an act of catharsis, as I have done here.Jon Krakauer -- Into Thin Air
- Zendagi migzara, Afghans like to say: Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end, kamyab, nah-kam, crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis.Khaled Hosseini -- The Kite Runner
- A catharsis.Barbara Kingsolver -- The Bean Trees
- Cathartic.Simone Elkeles -- Perfect Chemistry
- After years of watching women quietly accept abuse, it is cathartic to see someone like Usha lead a countercharge—even if we're uncomfortable with the bloody denouement and cannot condone murder.Nicholas D. Kristof -- Half the Sky