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Darlene Ehrenberg's presentation appropriately was part of the year-long celebration of the 125th anniversary of Karen Horney's birth. In the spirit of Horney's bold and revolutionary contributions, Ehrenberg's paper offered messages of innovation and thoughtful departure from classical psychoanalytic practices. As suggested by her title, Ehrenberg invites creativity and laughter into the analytic context and outlines some of the uses and potential misuses of play and humor in the treatment room.
Ehrenberg describes how playfulness, creativity, and humor can serve as profound therapeutic mechanisms, as powerful tools to be incorporated into existing relational ideas. Unlike traditional views that regard humor and play as outside of the therapeutic frame, or as indicative of counter-resistance, Ehrenberg argues that they are as equally usable as any other interaction emerging within the analytic context. Playful communications are valid forms of intersubjective material that can usefully emerge within the treatment. As such, humor and play need not be restricted in session, and can be thoughtfully utilized to help reveal, expand, and deepen the interaction in the person-to-person treatment matrix.
In this sense, humor and play can serve important purposes in treatments, whose meaning is constructed uniquely within each individual analytic dyad. Broadly