Freud’s psychoanalytical approach suggests that tragedy is our chance to act out, in a safe arena, the desires we have repressed. It is a chance to give form and action to the barbaric, primitive, monstrous types that society and civilisation has, supposedly, rejected. He sees tragedy as in direct opposition to the control, reason and seriousness of civilisation.

Providing an apology for art which holds it up as the opposition to existence in reality is too convenient. The supposed acts and horrors which society has rejected and which tragedy acts out, in some form of psychological catharsis, would be to ignorantly dismiss and ignore the constant mass of barbarism that exists in our current affairs and recent history.