If we were to maintain most of the conditions for it, does the catharsis of despair sift out through the little we did not maintain or will it remain leaving the person it possesses under a permanent spell? To answer this question for despair and other cathartic expression inducing emotions we need to consider what catharsis is.
Catharsis can be defined as the line that connects an external situation and our emotion discharging physical reaction to that situation. It lets us be relieved from the imperative of urges birthed out of things that happen to us and around us. It therefore serves a purpose. The purpose of freeing us to exercise our will more deliberately.
Under its aforementioned overarching purpose, catharsis has biological explanations. The explanations are as varied as the types of catharsis. For instance, the catharsis of sorrow can be achieved by crying profusely in the instance of great sorrow. This helps us discharge our emotions and function after a given time. That can be seen as its overarching purpose and there is a biological explanation for this function. Crying causes the elimination of hormones associated with stress specifically the elimination of adrenocorticotropic hormone as proposed by University of Minnesota biochemist William H. Frey II (Wikipedia).
From the above understanding of catharsis we can ask what happens when the connection between a situation and its relieving emotional physical expression is stretched to the limit. What happens when we cry and cry without distractions(the desire for sleep, food, etc..) because of an irreversible situation eliciting an undeniable sorrow? Do we finally loose the connection between the situation and its corresponding emotion in us (1st connection) or the connection between the emotion and its physical expression (2nd connection)(either case we lose the catharsis) or do both connections remain indefinitely?
In the case of crying because we suffered an injustice the 1st connection is likely to be the one first lost and mark the loss of catharsis. When we have cried and waled with little distractions keeping us from doing so we finally reach a state where the injustice does not illicit the same sort of sadness its novelty brought. This happens faster than the connection/causality between being sad and crying/waling changes.
This seems to be the norm beyond crying upon a sad event. If we look at laughing at a funny event without any distractions (hunger, sleep, etc...) we stop laughing not because we no longer laugh to funny events but because we come to find the funny thing to not be as funny as it was originally. We can keep on looking at other examples to show that the 1st connection is weaker (provided there are no distractions) than the 2nd one.
This begs the question of whether we can break the 2nd connection by maintaining the 1st and avoiding distractions. If we can do this then we will be able to actually change how we act/behave while under emotional sway and that not because of distractions possessing us out of our emotional possessions. If we can do this our will will be much more liberated from our emotion's dictation. As one might anticipate, this can have many ramifications.
