Playfulness and humor in the psychoanalytic relationship

Abstract

This discussion will focus on some of the ways in which playfulness and humor, which involve fun and pleasure (as distinct from hostile or denigrating forms of playfulness and humor), can be of value in the establishment, maintenance, and advancement of a viable analytic process and can serve as a measure of analytic achievement as well. Playfulness and humor, which can include the use of irony, affectionate kinds of teasing, banter and repartee, joint fantasy, and a host of other possibilities, can be effective as a means to communicate on multiple levels simultaneously and can allow for transcending communicative barriers. They can work to cut through distance and to expand the range of communication. They can even serve to restructure a relationship, or the focus of an interaction, by calling attention to interactive and relational considerations. In the analytic situation they can be catalytic in enabling the patient to have a new experience in relation to himor herself, or a new experience of intimacy in relation to another, and can become a basis for experimentation and exploration as they provide an opportunity for the discovery and integration of disavowed or repudiated aspects of one's personality and for the discovery of undeveloped resources. Often their value lies precisely in the kind of new affective experience they can help generate. Some patients may learn that they have a capacity for tenderness and affection, or for humor and wit, which heretofore had never been expressed. Some may discover their own ability to deal with frustration or disappointment. These experiences of self-discovery can become a source of pride and expanding self-esteem. One patient described the impact of the experience of mutual pleasure in an interaction as follows: Although she had always assumed she was insatiable, a bottomless pit of desire, afraid to want for fear there would be no way to limit her craving, she noted that our playful interaction gave her an opportunity to discover how satisfied she could be by experiencing my pleasure in relation to her. Her fear had been that she would want to be with me 24 hours a day, that I would find this distasteful, and that she would be unable to tolerate the