It did not make him feel good to do it, but there was a kind of cathartic effect.

The trouble of earlier in the week seemed to work wonders and clearly had a cathartic effect in concentrating minds and spirit.

Once Marc discovers the cathartic effect of saying sorry to the chef's widow and child, he becomes addicted to the sorry business.

He brilliantly summons up the suffocating drabness of postwar English suburbia and the cathartic effect of hearing raw blues and rock'n'roll on imported albums.

The cathartic effects of the McCartney murder have, one hopes, pulled the blinkers from all our eyes.