Whereas Aristotle had limited the evocation of fear and sympathy strictly to the cathartic effect of tragedy, a dissolution can be observed of the boundaries of concepts of catharsis following on from Bernays, Freud and Nietzsche, as the possibilities and limits of catharsis as an emotional abreaction are redrawn. What led to the break with the Aristotelian tradition, what transformations of catharsis can be observed in modern theories of art and in modern art?