Letters to the Editor

DEAR SIR,

I have experienced the following episode with a patient which might be a contribution to the topic of psychotherapy through laughter.

In their moods of positive transference it is well known that patients tend to idealize us. This is a regressive step towards infantile dependence, which fact needs no explanation here. I tend therefore to discourage this attitude. I do that mainly by emphasizing that the analyst cannot be superhuman, hence should be neither elevated to unrealistic heights, nor burdened by tasks he clearly cannot accomplish—even adding that since the analyst cannot be perfect, it is ludicrous to be unhappy in the role of the analysand, if one is (probably) even 'less perfect'; the analyst certainly does not disdain him for it.

In that very moment I committed a parapraxis: I said to a patient 'some of my best friends are neurotics'. This involuntary witticism cleared the atmosphere and we both burst out laughing.

Laughter had an instant healing effect on the patient. Yet I forgot my own saying instantaneously. With him the good effect lasted, with me it was immediately lost, and I was unable to remember the saying, until several days later I felt a direct compulsion to ask the patient whether he remembered what we were laughing about. He did this in no time, laughing again and again, reliving feeling grateful. I felt foolish.

Laughter should relieve—that we know from Freud—and so it worked with the patient. What, however, happened to me? Analysis was advisable.

In all Freud's work I have not found a single instance in which laughter, instead of relieving, had caused an unpleasant parapraxis. Parapraxes are usually caused by one's having been narcissistically hurt. I found, however (apart from the possibility of the Signorelli case which is not entirely conclusive), only one doubtless example in which parapraxic forgetfulness was in fact caused by a guilty conscience and not the other way round. In this the name of Gassendi was forgot