What’s Abreaction?

Abreaction is a process of bringing to consciousness and, thus, to adequate expression, of material that has been unconscious (usually because of repression). Abreaction refers to the two aspects of a “complex”, the intellectual representation and the accompanying affect and includes not only the recollection of forgotten memories and experiences but also their reliving with appropriate emotional display and discharge of affect. The methods used to bring the repressed material into consciousness is called catarsis. The term abreaction technically refers to the end-result.