The purpose of Catharsis ( in psychological terms ) is the purging of repressed emotions
I have read Kate's book and I do not see any such cathartic process ... there are no emotions expressed in it, that I can see, which have not been expressed previously ( and often )
What are the emotions you are refering to ? ( which Kate repressed prior to writing the book )
The term 'catharsis', as far as I remember, is Aristotelian. It is certainly a Greek word, and if not coined by Aristotle himself, was used by him to refer to purging and cleansing, often through the production of works of creativity.
Repression is a nineteenth century term and concept, and I do not believe Catharsis is necessarily the purging of
repressed emotions, but merely the removal of strong and important ones.
As we have mentioned before with regard to Gerry and Kate McCann, people obviously have different ways of expressing those emotions. Kate is clearly uncomfortable displaying her feelings, and over compensates in the book by making crude references to extremely personal thoughts and ideas, out of the blue.
There are indeed few direct references to Kate's feelings in the book, and more significantly, as Luz points out, few warm references to Madeleine. In fact there isn't that much in there about Madeleine at all.
A book entitled 'Madeleine' should really be about someone called Madeleine (forgive me my simplicity, I'm just a high school English teacher!). This book 'Madeleine', however, is really far more about Kate. That essential narcissistic element indicates that the book was really written for Kate herself - whether she puts in fluffy and emotional comments or not.
The process of writing and displaying that writing in the shop window was more important for Kate than the actual 'Madeleine' content. Quantity (of words) constituted the purge, rather than their emotional quality.
The act of catharsis lies in the
process of creating. Whether the final product is what the audience was expecting is something else.
