ABSTRACT
There seems to be a deep human longing to make emotional connections with the experiences of others. Our capacity to enter the world of the characters in Coronation Street or Brookside, much as the Greeks were able to enter the world of Sophocles’ characters, seems to indicate our general ability to imagine, at least in part, the world of another. The Ancient Greeks recognised the therapeutic releasing of emotion in an audience, triggered by the actors’ expression of feelings in their role, and called it ‘catharsis’. A similar process is at work when we ‘feel our way’ into a case.
