1. an experience through which one comes to understand an event or relationship in a different or unexpected way that results in an emotional coming to terms with it.

2. originally, a concept from psychoanalysis positing that clients achieve meaningful and lasting change through new interpersonal affective experiences with the therapist, particularly with regard to situations that clients were unable to master as children. [originally described in 1946 by Hungarian psychoanalyst Franz Alexander (1891–1964) and U.S. physician Thomas Morton French (b. 1892)]