Introduction

In popular lay beliefs and western folk psychology the expression of emotions, including crying, is often considered to be beneficial for one’s health. Accordingly, inhibition and repression of emotions are believed to result in maladaptive chronic activation of the body and, consequently, ill health. In addition, people are generally convinced that talking about emotional experiences with others is beneficial and facilitates emotional recovery. Freud encouraged patients to remember traumatic events and to re-experience the negative emotions as vividly as possible (Freud, 1915/1957). Although he already had some doubts concerning the efficacy of cathartic therapy and abandoned it, many others in the medical community did not. In the 1940s, there were several examples of publications in which the positive effects of this approach were described. Symonds (1954), for example, concluded in his review of the literature that catharsis was the most frequent cause of success in psychotherapy.