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Key points
- Even therapists need to remember what Jerry Seinfeld told graduates, "do not lose your sense of humor."
- Freud recognized that humor plays a role in venting emotions and ovecoming inhibitions.
- Humor can provide a new perspective, hope, and connection.
As a therapist, I try to create a safe space for my patients, one in which they feel comfortable sharing their darkest feelings, thoughts, and experiences. After all, it's not easy for many people to open up about their pain, guilt, anger, and despair, whether it relates to marriage, work, grief, parenting, or other life challenges. So it may seem odd that I'm suggesting that humor can have an important role in therapy. But while psychotherapy is serious business even Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, recognized that humor can serve a purpose. In his 1905 book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, he discussed the role that humor can play a role in venting emotions and overcoming inhibitions. Humor also has other benefits.
The Power of Perspective
In his speech to Duke University graduates, Jerry Seinfeld said, "what I need to tell you as a comedian, do not lose your sense of humor. You can have no idea at this point in your life how much you are going to need it to get through....You got to laugh. That is the one thing at the end of your life you will not wish you did less of. Humor is the most powerful, most survival, essential quality you will ever have or need to navigate through the human experience....It’s your Stanley Cup water bottle on the brutal long hike of life."
I don't disagree. Humor can add much-needed perspective during a tense moment, in life and in therapy.
My patient Greg was 92. In his elder years, his life had drastically changed. Once he had been an on-the-go tennis-playing, Broadway, and opera enthusiast. Physical weakness and instability brought on by Parkinson's disease now made it difficult for him to walk. Much of his time was spent in his apartment with his aide. He spent weekends with his adult children, feeling resentful and guilty about his dependence on them.
One day Greg, walked into my office, hunched over his cane, and immediately launched into bitter complaints about his daughters. The source of his rage: the tissue boxes they bought for their homes. “What’s wrong with them?," he practically barked. "We never had tissues boxes like that in the house when they were growing up!"
Greg's face grew increasingly red as he went on about tissue boxes. "I was even thinking I should order tissues for them!" When he finally quieted down, I said, “Greg, if this is the biggest complaint you have against your daughters, I think you’re doing pretty well!” I couldn't help but laugh as I said this. After all, Greg spent every weekend with one of his two daughters. He was far better off than most of the elderly in America, many of whom rarely see their adult children. I wanted to point out that if the low point of their relationship revolved around tissue boxes, he had it pretty good. Fortunately, Greg was open to my observation and broke into laughter as well. “I guess you’re right,” he chuckled sheepishly.
I knew that Greg was referring to and frustrated by cube-shaped boxes that made it difficult for his trembling fingers to reach into them and pull out tissues. Fortunately, just a bit of humor gave him a reality check and a bit of perspective. He went from feeling miserable about his daughters to acknowledging that he had it pretty good. He knew his daughters were devoted to him but his frustration with his physical limitations had clouded his outlook. In this case, humor was, in essence, a vehicle for a new perspective. It planted the seed for positivity.
Instilling hope
Adding a dash of humor to a therapy session depends on having a sixth sense of when the session will benefit from some lightening—a moment of irony, absurdity, and/or laughter. When used well, humor provides perspective, as it did for Greg above. It also defused his anger, decreased his tension, and fostered our therapeutic bond.
In his book A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, sociologist Peter Berger talks about what he calls “signals of transcendence”—little flashes of light which seem to point to a transcendent reality. “By laughing at the imprisonment of the human spirit, humour implies that this imprisonment is not final but will be overcome, and by this implication provides yet another signal of transcendence, in the form of an intimation of redemption.”
In other words, as Berger points out, humor brings hope. As long as we can laugh at something, all is not lost! And sharing a laugh, as all good friends have discovered, fosters an empathic connection. Laughing together helps cement a bond. The bond between therapist and patient is a vitally important ingredient for psychotherapeutic change. It's by sharing one's deepest feelings and thoughts, and even a bit of humor, that this bond grows.
Humor and humanity
I learned about the importance of using humor in therapy from my own psychoanalysis. My analyst didn’t offer advice per se but how he handled issues that arose in treatment wasn’t just helpful to me; it is something I have put into use when I treat others. It takes time to hone this skill. It’s not like telling jokes to a friend. And there are no rules or guidelines. It requires being deeply attuned to your patient and sensing when a humorous or ironic interjection will add just the right note to the therapeutic discourse.
As a clinician for four decades, I have witnessed numerous numinous moments in which a sense of closeness and deep humanity came from sharing humor. A lighthearted comment can give a patient that bit of hope or ray of light they need at just that time. Laughing together is actually a sign of therapeutic improvement: People who are severely depressed don’t generally laugh. As treatment progresses, it’s wonderful to see their sense of humor return. That first smile or chuckle can be seen as the inner light breaking through the dark shell of psychopathology and a welcome signpost on the road to recovery.
To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
