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This note is in response to Dr. Norman Holland's question: Why do we get pleasure from horror movies? My answer is different from his. Dr. Holland thinks that Aristotle offered a cognitive answer to a similar question, why do we get pleasure in the theatre from tragedies? Yet what Aristotle wrote was "to purge us of pity and terror." That seems to imply bodily rather than cognitive responses.
Aristotle was the first to offer a theory of the catharsis of emotions. The idea of catharsis is currently in disrepute because Freud rejected it, even though his first book reported its success. Also experimental psychologists think they have disproved it, because they have shown that acting out anger usually doesn't get rid of it.
But Aristotle didn't propose that audiences shout in anger or run away in fear. He was referring to the effect of simply watching a tragedy, somewhat like Wordsworth's idea that poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility.
The crucial thing, according to theories of aesthetic distance, is that the audience identifies with the players, and feel their emotions, but at the same time realizes that they are safe in the theatre. At this distance, being both in and out of their own feelings, emotions that might be painful if one was completely involved in them become pleasurable. In a tragedy, one can have a "good" rather than a bad cry.
My students go on roller coasters and experience them as pleasurable, but only if they are sure that the ride is safe. They allow themselves to feel fear because they are able, at the same time, to watch themselves doing it, rather than becoming completely caught up in it.
Emotions are only bodily states of arousal, of readiness for fight or flight, etc. In humans, at least, we have many ways of managing these states, not only fight or flight. Feeling safe enough to experience them and watch ourselves doing it makes them pleasurable, rather than painful.
The most controversial issue in catharsis theory is the attempt to answer the question of what to do with the energy and adrenaline that is aroused if you don't fight or flee. When I was a young man, I knew that running 6 miles when angry would burn off some of the adrenaline so that I might be able to sleep at night.
Later I stumbled on to a better way. Sometimes, instead of blowing my top, I said to the person who had angered me, "I am angry at you because...." Usually I had to repeat my reasons several times before they understood that although courteous, I was also angry. During my explanation, I often experienced the room as warmer. However, after several episodes, I realized that it was me that was hot. Body heat, I think rapidly metabolizes the adrenaline touched off by anger.
What about fear? Try this one on: shaking and sweating. My next post will describe some of my intense yet pleasurable experiences of fear. Also it will describe the catharsis of other emotions, such as grief (easy) and shame (you may find this one hard to believe).
