The Use of Humor in Psychotherapy

Humor is one of those fundamental phenomena that eventually crop up in psychotherapy. We expect, and sometimes encourage, the expression of a patient's anger, and facilitate the expression of sadness with a box of Kleenex left carefully within reach, but the expression of humor is usually left to accident. The therapist and the patient are sometimes made uneasy by its appearance and at other times are delighted by it, but nearly always it comes as a surprise. Although it has been regarded as a basic expression of emotion and described as such at least as early as Darwin (1872), we seem to have agreed to give it a special status in therapy as something spontaneous but hoped for, and not to be deliberately provoked. While its appearance in the patient is nearly always welcome, even the therapist is allowed greater liberties with humor than with other forms of emotional expression, as if it presented less danger of intruding on the emotional freedom of the patient.

Schwarz (1974) regards humor as being helpful in psychotherapy as a strong and somewhat telepathic communication between therapist and patient. Klein (1974), concentrating on the cognitive aspect of humor as something that enhances self-observation, believes that in some unspecified fashion humor enables people to interpret their position in life in more manifold ways. Ventis (1973) suggests that humor be used as an adjunct to behavior modification, as a form of desensitization in which the client is encouraged to laugh at what usually provokes anxiety, without necessarily inquiring into why it should have provoked anxiety to begin with. O'Connell (1971) argues that a sense of humor is one of the goals of therapy, though it is not clear how that