A humor workshop program to aid coping with life stress

Abstract

Following a brief review of some uses to which humor has been put, the author describes the development of a Humor Workshop program to assist people in the use of humor as a coping mechanism for life stress. Volunteers, arranged in three small pilot groups (N = 22), attended the complete course of four sessions of structured learning, plus a fifth one for retrospective discussion. Analysis of quantitative data revealed a significant increase in the use of coping humor over the duration of the Workshops, and a scrutiny of qualitative feedback and participant's comments yielded pointers to how it might be improved for future presentations. An intervention strategy based on the creative use of humor would appear to have potential value for the maintenance of mental health and well-being. KEY WORDS: Humor, Life Stress, Psychotherapy. Although the topic of humor has been debated at least from the time of Aristotle in the fourth century before Christ (Banbraugh 1963), for much of recorded history significant contributions on its use have been somewhat infrequent. During the 1960's, however, a surge of interest in this field of study occurred (cf. the Humor Movement, Korotkov 1991), with the realization that humor and laughter serve important roles in maintaining and enhancing the quality of life. It has been speculated that the overt phenomena of laughter and smiling had their origins in expressions of victory and defeat respectively, even before human beings as we know them had evolved from their earliest hominid beginnings (Pettifor 1982; Raskin 1985). It is thus posited that from early in hominid evolutionary history manifestations of humor-related behavior served specific purposes such as communication and the release of emotion. Ideas concerning the usefulness of humor can be arranged into four basic categories. Firstly, there are those involving social facilitation and control as summarized by Overholser (1992). Humor can help build relationships and maintain social bonds, as well as ease tensions and reinforce the norms of the ingroup - partly through ridiculing the outgroup. The second category of humor use is in the sphere of teaching and education. Rutkaus (1981) notes that long-term retention of subject matter is enhanced when humorous examples are included in the program, while Dolce (1984) found that encouraging people to laugh at their mistakes produced positive benefits in the classroom. Thirdly, humor can be used as an expression of veiled aggression as also in mediation - this use being found among court jesters and ritual clowns of the Middle Ages (Lieberman 1977; Haig 1986). The modern counterparts of such performers are comedians (particularly those involved in political humor: Benton 1988) and circus clowns. The fourth and final use of humor is the one with which the present article is most concerned, namely as an aid to coping with stress and in psychotherapy. Such benefits were obviously known to at least one writer of the Old Testament, who stated: A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones (Proverbs, 17:22, New International Version). In more recent times Freud (1952, originally published 1928) recognized the therapeutic value of humor, commenting that it takes its place in the great series of methods devised by man for evading the compulsion to suffer ... (p.217). His theory, discussed in more detail in an earlier work (Freud, 1976 - originally published in 1905), was that through humor people reduce their problems to child's play, but that it was a rare and precious gift that few can actually achieve. Levine (1977) presented an overview of the understanding (at that time) of some of the useful roles played by humor, and it is clear that the topic was being accepted as one worthy of serious study. Among the points made by Levine was the belief that a humorous attitude helps one feel more capable of overcoming fears and tolerating distress; it could relieve anxiety and re-assert ego mastery. …