The psychotherapist seems to us a serious and significant person, and the therapeutic session is a painful meeting for the sake of hard inner work. So, in general, it is. With one exception: psychologists sometimes joke too. This is a good way to distance yourself from the situation, relieve stress and get closer to the client. Unless, of course, laugh not at him, but with him.
Humor gives independence and depth of vision, insures against boundless self-righteousness and allows you to relax a little. “Humor helps to make the unbearable bearable, which is ultimately the essence of the process of psychotherapy,” says psychoanalyst Sheldon Roth.1. A few more quotes from prominent therapists and analysts — about humor in psychology and about psychology with humor.
Wilfred Bion, psychoanalyst:
- In any office you can see two rather frightened people: a patient and a psychoanalyst. If this is not the case, then it is generally incomprehensible why they are trying to find out well-known truths.
- The high probability of meeting old friends makes the prospect of Hell less daunting than the prospect of Heaven, for which life on earth has not sufficiently prepared man.
Thomas Zass, psychiatrist:
- If you talk to God, you pray; if God speaks to you, you have schizophrenia.
- Narcissist: A psychoanalytic term for a person who loves himself more than the analyst. This is considered a manifestation of a terrible mental illness, the successful treatment of which depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more than himself.
- In the XNUMXth century masturbation was a disease, in the XNUMXth century it became a cure.
If you talk to God, you pray; if God speaks to you, you have schizophrenia
Abraham Maslow, humanistic psychologist
- If all you have is a hammer, then every problem will look like a nail to you.
- There is more creativity in an excellent soup than in a second-rate picture.
Sheldon Ruth, psychoanalyst
- Humor helps to make the unbearable bearable, which ultimately constitutes the main content of the process of psychotherapy.
- Many fragile individuals actually want to say «hello» by saying «goodbye».
Normal people are just the ones you don’t know very well.
Viktor Frankl, existential psychologist
- Humor gives a person the opportunity to take a distance in relation to anything, including himself.
Alfred Adler, psychologist
- Normal people are just the ones you don’t know very well.
Sigmund Freud, onye ọkà n'akparamàgwà mmadụ
- Ndị mmadụ na-eme omume ọma karịa ka ha chere, na-enwekwa omume rụrụ arụ karịa ka ha nwere ike iche n'echiche.
- When an old maid gets a dog and an old bachelor collects figurines, the former compensates for the absence of married life, while the latter creates the illusion of numerous love victories. All collectors are a kind of Don Juan.
1 K. Yagnyuk “Under the sign of PSI. Aphorisms of famous psychologists” (Cogito-Center, 2016).