Humor and Psyche: Psychoanalytic Perspectives by James W. Barron

Author:James W. Barron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Analytic Press

Virtually all analysts agree that whatever our psychoanalytic orientation, we should not provide gratifications for our patients. How then can we harness humor in the service of therapeutic gain and psychoanalytic insight at the same time as protecting the analyst’s abstinence and neutrality? In my opinion, the answer is that the humor must approximate an interpretation, in particular a transference interpretation, and as such must always be offered prudently.

There is a distinct danger that the analyst, through the injudicious use of humor, might come to represent the absent or lost comforting mother (a consoling superego) and so provide a corrective and/or gratifying experience. When this occurs, the analyst has left the neutral space, become a transference object, and acted out his countertransference.

Equally a patient’s humor, when it distracts the analyst from his task, might be considered an abuse of the setting and here is a brief example:

A middle-aged patient, who rarely acknowledges his patently obvious depression and whose facade of joviality in the face of distress has been a feature of his analysis, has reached a crisis in which his characteristic defense is working less well. He tells me he cannot sleep, his business is under threat, his overdraft has been recalled, he is feeling hopeless to the point of wanting to end it all, and his wife is totally lacking in sympathy, indeed she is aggressively critical of him. I say: “You’re clearly wanting me to be aware of how deeply depressed and hopeless you are feeling,” to which he responds, “You should see me on a bad day.” This was characteristic of the skill he developed in social situations of distracting his peers from the concerns they had about him, by evoking humorous responses. It can immediately be seen that were he to succeed in his attempt to hide his depression behind humor, this could provide relief for an analyst who could not cope with his depression, as it did for his parents. The depression is side-stepped and denied while they are busy laughing. If the analyst responds likewise he has become a transference object, and a countertransference enactment has occurred.

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