A recent study explored the relationship between humor and psychological health in people who had experienced trauma, showing that higher levels of humor linked to a reduction in post-traumatic symptoms and also less difficulty regulating unpleasant emotions such as anxiety. fear or anger (Boerner, Joseph and Murphy, 2017).
Humor is one of the most important forms of communication, even if difficult to codify because it lacks fixed rules. By making humor we can regulate the aggression of the other, stimulating a positive reaction. Knowing how to laugh at oneself similarly modulates the aggression that we sometimes turn against, for example with self-criticism or with devaluing thoughts. On the level of the relationship with the other or with ourselves, humor therefore establishes a real complicity: a witty joke can block the eruption of anxiety, fear or anger.
Freud was the first to express himself on “witticisms” describing them as psychological mechanisms through which otherwise repressed psychic energy can be released. The father of psychoanalysis writes: “We consider that there is a stimulus to insult a person, but this is so fought by the sense of convenience that the insult cannot take place. (…) Suppose there is the possibility of deriving a good wit from the material of words and thoughts otherwise used for the insult (…). The repressed purpose (…) can gain sufficient strength to overcome inhibition. The wit becomes possible and the pleasure produced is not only that produced by the wit, it is incomparably greater ” (Freud, 1905, p. 144).
All this also has its counterpart on a psycho-biological level, since humor is associated with the release of substances such as beta-endorphins, known for their analgesic effect, acting as a stress moderator. A recent study by Matsushima and collaborators (2017) sees the sense of humor associated with changes in blood pressure, identifying it as one of the most effective communication strategies in generating physical and psychological well-being.
Humor is configured as a real coping strategy for unpleasant emotional experiences and problematic situations of every day (especially those that cannot be changed): grasping the comic elements of a situation puts a distance between oneself and the problem that reduces feelings of anxiety, frustration and helplessness, changing the perception of the difficulties we are experiencing. Let’s think about what a powerful effect the use of self-irony has in a conflictual relationship!
But be careful not to confuse humor with irony or even less with sarcasm : if irony presupposes in the other the ability to resolve the ambiguity or “paradox” underlying the joke, sarcasm is instead used by only one of the interlocutors to release elements of socially unacceptable aggression, based on an imbalance that can only widen the relational divergence.
Humor is distinguished from both irony and sarcasm by its subtle but fundamental peculiarity: being based on compassion , the Latin cum-patior , the ability to “feel together”. Making humor presupposes the unfolding of a double sentiment, indignation and compassion, which combine and merge to generate a unique and complex experience, as Pirandello well argued in one of his essays on the subject.
Many psychologists have scientifically studied the differences between the ways of laughing and making people laugh that have been outlined so far: Martin and his collaborators (2003), for example, described four types of “humor” (“self-enhancing”, “affiliative” , “Aggressive” and “self-defeating”), of which only the first two forms (comparable to the humor described above) were connected to greater psychological health and relational well-being, unlike the others, more similar to what I have described as “irony” and “sarcasm”.
Humor, as a coping strategy for painful states, is therefore characterized by all those aspects that distinguish, both for theoretical inspiration and for clinical practice, the approaches of the third generation of cognitive-behavioral therapy : they identify in acceptance and mindfulness the strategies of choice to make change and implement psychological well-being, and find in the exercise of “compassion” the way to restore a healthy relationship with oneself and with others.
