Abreaction

Abreaction is a psychological term for relieving someone of an experience of emotional excesses as a result of some prior taumatic event he/she had to undergo. It is generally achieved through hypnosis or suggestion.

The patient undergoes such a psychoanalytical treatment for expression and consequent release of a previously repressed emotion that caused the mental condition or illness.

Such patients generally have experience of traumatic events in their lives that causes this mental condition.

The concept of abreaction was introduced by Sigmund Freud in 1893. He had argued that pent-up emotions associated with a trauma can be discharged by talking about it.