How Humor Heals: An Anatomical Perspective

Arthur Asa Berger
Professor Emeritus
Broadcast & Electronic Communication Arts
San Francisco State University

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The notion that humor is something that heals is now generally well recognized. Norman Cousins’ book, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient spread the news of humor’s healing powers to the general public. But well before Cousins came along, many others had been doing research and writing about the healing power of humor.

A Bio/Psycho/Social/Cultural Perspective on the Effects of Humor

Thus, the indefatigable William Fry, the notorious chimp tickler, had explained in an address given to the American Orthopsychiatric Association in Washington D.C. as early as 1979 that:

Fry has made numerous other contributions dealing with the relation of humor and health, and a considerable number of other scholars have done so, as well.

I don’t think it is necessary, then, to argue that humor is generally held to help people, in a number of different ways. I will suggest, in this little essay, that exploring how humor “heals” should take what I describe as a bio/psycho/social/cultural perspective. I will be dealing, then, with the biological, the psychological, the social, and the cultural aspects of humor as they relate to health. These can be correlated with responses of the body (in the biological area) and kinds of communication (in other areas):

Area	Kind of Communication
Biological	Internal: physical responses by body
Psychological	Intrapersonal: Internal dialogues, etc.
Social	Interpersonal: relations with others
Cultural	Coded: learned methods of coping

Fig. 1: Humor and the Bio/Psycho/Social/Cultural Perspective

I will deal with these four areas in my analysis of how humor heals, but first, a radical proposal.

A Radical Proposal: It’s the Techniques Found in Humor That Do the Work

I have suggested, in earlier works, that there are 45 techniques, which, used in various permutations and combinations, generate humor in humorous texts: jokes, cartoons, comic strips, plays, movies–you name it. These techniques are the engines that drive the car of comedy and humor and it is these techniques, not the subjects of humor, that are the crucial matter in understanding how humor heals. I have discussed these techniques in some detail in my book, An Anatomy of Humor (Transaction, 1993) and will not go over them but I will offer them for readers.

Language	Logic	Identity	Action
Allusion	Absurdity	Before/After	Chase
Bombast	Accident	Burlesque	Slapstick
Definition	Analogy	Caricature	Speed
Exaggeration	Catalogue	Eccentricity
Facetiousness	Coincidence	Embarrassment
Insults	Comparison	Exposure
Infantilism	Disappointment	Grotesque
Irony	Ignorance	Imitation
Misunderstanding	Mistakes	Impersonation
Over literalness	Repetition	Mimicry
Puns/Wordplay	Reversal	Parody
Repartee	Rigidity	Scale
Ridicule	Theme	Stereotype
Sarcasm	Variation
Satire	Unmasking

Here are the 45 Techniques Numbered and placed in Alphabetical Order.

1. Absurdity	16. Embarrassment	31. Parody
2. Accident	17. Exaggeration	32. Puns
3. Allusion	18. Exposure	33. Repartee
4. Analogy	19. Facetiousness	34. Repetition
5. Before/After	20. Grotesque	35. Reversal
6. Bombas	21. Ignorance	36. Ridicule
7. Burlesque	22. Imitation	37. Rigidity
8. Caricature	23. Impersonation	38. Sarcasm
9. Catalogue	24. Infantilism	39. Satire
10. Chase Scene	25. Insults	40. Scale, Size
11. Coincidence	26. Irony	41. Slapstick
12. Comparison	27. Literalness	42. Speed
13. Definition	28. Mimicry	43. Stereotypes
14. Disappointment	29. Mistakes	44. Theme/Var.
15. Eccentricity	30. Misunderstanding	45. Unmasking

Techniques of Humor in Alphabetical Order

I elicited these techniques when I made a substantial content analysis of humorous works, asking the question “what is it that is generating the humor in the text I am examining?” After I found that I had 45 techniques I discovered that they fit into four categories: humor that deal with logical considerations, humor that deals with identity, humor that is essentially linguistic, and humor based on physical actions–speed, body language and so on.

What I will suggest is that it is these techniques, in themselves, and separated from jokes, riddles, random comments that evoke laughter–or any other form of humor–are what help us when we experience mirthful laughter. It is the techniques, often working in combination, behind the message or content aspect of the humor, that does the work of healing and helping people deal with anxieties and other problems.

Humor at the Biological and at the Intrapersonal Level

Let me assume that I have already covered the biological aspects of humor. We have seen that mirthful laughter has an immediate physical effect on a number of systems in the body and there is ample evidence that mirthful laughter stimulates the production of endorphins and has other immediate physical benefits. At the biological level, we have a kind of visceral or neuro-physical communication as the body responds, immediately, to the stimuli generated by humor and laughter.

At the intrapersonal level, when we laugh at ourselves (so to speak), humor helps us recognize that there is an element of absurdity in life, helps us recognize the negative consequences of being overly serious about ourselves, and helps us deal with the internal dialogue we often carry on in our heads that often causes problems for us. Many jokes and other humorous texts can be thought of as being similar to stories that Hindu medicine healers make up to help patients deal with their problems.

According to Bruno Bettelheim, who discusses this matter in his book The Uses of Enchantment , these medicine men create a story which gives form to the problems the person suffers from and by contemplating this story, the afflicted person is able to understand the impasses he or she is suffering from and ways these problems might be resolved. There is a big difference between being given some abstract information about a problem a person is suffering from and creating a narrative in which this problem is dramatized and ways the problem may be dealt with are suggested.

In one of Matt Groening’s strips in Life in Hell , (“Parents Out of Control”) he has a character offer a monologue on the various horrendous things parents often do to their children. This character says:

Groening is offering a lecture, actually, in cartoon form, on the problems that people face growing up in so-called dysfunctional families. His zany characters and his nonidealized picture of families has, I would suggest, a considerable value to many people who can recognize that they, too, might have had a “childhood in hell,” and can laugh at Groening’s characters–and then, recognizing that they are like countless others, and can also laugh at themselves. We have here the techniques of analogy and exaggeration at work. Misery, we have been told, likes company–and so, it would seem, do children from dysfunctional families…and others who suffer from one affliction or another.

They recognize that they are not alone.

The Social or Interpersonal Level of Humor

Let me move on, now, to the next level of analysis–the social or interpersonal level, when there are interactions between individuals that are of consequence. Consider the following joke. (A joke will be understood to be a short narrative, meant to amuse, with a punch line.)

The man in this joke is rigid–he has the same answer to all of Smith’s inquiries. “Tried it once and didn’t like it.” Thus, the punch line, “Your only son” picks up on this and shows the futility of rigidity. This joke, like a story made up by our Hindu healer for a person who suffers from rigidity and perhaps a mild form of obsessive-compulsive behavior, has something to teach us–even though we might not recognize we are learning anything.

Rigidity, over-literalness, and other similar forms of behavior are then ridiculed and one is led to see, in the events that take place in the joke, of the folly of these kinds of behavior. In order to function in society, and get along with others, we need to be flexible and able to adjust to various problems and complicated situations that come our way. In dramatic comedies, jokes, and other forms of humor, we often have rigid, monomaniacal types who are the butts of the humor: misers, gluttons, dirty old men and women, and so on.

Let me offer a poem that shows the folly of being rigid.

We find many jokes, cartoons and comics deal with problems people face at the interpersonal level–focusing attention on relations between men and women, workers and bosses, parents and children, and so on. And sometimes, we have humor that has a direct socio-political dimension, as we find in many episodes of Doonesbury .

How Humor Heals at the Cultural Level

We are now at the final level of analysis, the cultural level–in which humor functions as a kind of coding that pervades a given cultural group or sub-cultural group of some kind. Culture is defined in many different ways, but the anthropological view of culture, which is the one I am concerned with here, generally suggests that culture deals with ways of living that are passed on from one generation to another. Culture involves notions of what is good and bad, what is beautiful and ugly, what is sacred and profane, and how to relate to others and function in society. (Anthropologists have offered more than a hundred different definitions of culture but they all deal with these topics, and see culture as a kind of coding or set of rules for living.)

On the cultural or perhaps sub-cultural level, Jewish humor is worth considering. There are two strains of Jewish humor: that which comes from the shtetls and Eastern-European Jewish life in the early twentieth century and more contemporary Jewish humor, stemming from the experience of Jews in modern societies. In the shtetls, the Jews were generally poor, were constantly persecuted (suffered from pogroms and other forms of anti-Semitism) but though they lived precariously, on the thin margin of survival, their humor radiates with warmth.

Jewish humor, as I understand it, is humor told by Jews that deals with Jewish beliefs, institutions, cultural practices, historical experiences and related matters. This humor, in its Eastern European form, involves a remarkable collection of eccentric types and zanies–schlemiels, schlimazels, schnorrers, schadkens and so on–who developed as a consequence of the harsh conditions under which everyone lived and who were accepted as part of life in the shtetls. Jewish humor helped the Jews in the shtetls survive; it was a valuable adaptive coping technique. It kept them alert, it taught them how to laugh at themselves and helped them deal with the anxiety that they experienced.

On Techniques of Humor and Their Functions

Let me suggest some of the more common techniques of humor used by Jews in Eastern Europe (and in contemporary countries as well) that are connected to their marginality and relative powerlessness. Jews were required to use techniques that were not too overtly hostile and whose aggression could not be easily recognized.

In many cases we find the Jews using “victim humor” which can be thought of as aggression or “insult humor” that is turned against the teller. But the use of this victim humor is not an exercise in masochism but a subtle and indirect way of attacking enemies. Freud said that he could think of no people who made fun of themselves more than the Jews, but this “making fun” of oneself was not a matter of self-hate, at all. It was a defensive form of aggression against others who were more powerful. Let me offer and example.

This joke seems to deal with the stereotype of Jewish cheapness. Moses doesn’t ask what the commandment is but how much it costs. But in reality or on a more profound level, it could be argued, the joke deals with the rejection of God and his commandments by others. And the stereotype of Jewish cheapness (ironic in that the Jews are amongst the most generous contributors to charities in the United States ) must be seen against the background of poverty and deprivation that was the lot of most Jews in the shtetls and small communities in Eastern Europe.

Let us consider, then, some of the basic techniques of humor Jews use in their humor, keeping in mind their relative powerlessness and social marginality. In the United States of America, we must remember, approximately 98 out of every 100 people are NOT Jewish.

Technique of Humor	Benefits: (Shows that)
Absurdity	Life is full of illogicalities, crazy things
Accidents	People make mistakes all the time
Allusions	Others screw up, too
Exposure	People do lots of stupid things
Mistakes	Life is a comedy of errors
Misunderstanding	People often get confused about things
Rigidity	Fixations and obsessiveness are self-defeating

Techniques of Humor and Their Functions

Jewish humor, I would suggest, functioned as a means of transcendence for the Jews in the shtetls and also helped give the Jews a stronger sense of identity. These techniques of humor have the same function for people from other religions as well, I should add.

Conclusions

Humor, we see, functions on many different levels and has many positive effects. At the biological level, laughter provides exercise and stimulates the production of endorphins. At the psychological or intrapsychic level, it helps us cope with our internal dialogues and lessen the severity of our feelings of guilt and anxiety. At the social or interpersonal level, it facilitates our relations with others (sometimes distracting us when we are angry or confusing communication so that people who should be antagonistic towards one another don’t recognize they should be hostile). And at the cultural level, humor helps members of various sub-cultures and cultures maintain their identity and cope with problems connected to their marginality and status.

Humorists are, it could be said, unacknowledged therapists and humor has obvious and impressive therapeutic value–at every level we find it. Humor helps us avoid obsessive behavior, it relieves us of feelings of guilt, it fosters creativity, and it purges us of violent emotions. Conrad Hyers points out in Zen and the Comic Spirit that the Zen masters acted like clowns and made use of humor in their teaching for hundreds of years.

Our humorists and comedians can be thought of, then, as secularized versions of the Zen masters. These humorist who, without recognizing what they are doing (and often without our recognizing what they are doing to us and for us) help heal us, and perhaps also help us learn how to heal ourselves.

He and she who laughs, lasts and those who laugh last, laugh best.

References

Bettleheim, Bruno (1976). The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales New York : Alfred A. Knopf.
Berger, Arthur Asa (1993). An Anatomy of Humor. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Berger, Arthur Asa (1995). Blind Men and Elephants. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Berger, Arthur Asa (1996). The Genius of the Jewish Joke. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Publishers.
Berger, Arthur Asa (1997).The Art of Comedy Writing New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Cousins, Norman (1979). Anatomy of an Illness. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Freud, Sigmund (1963). Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Fry, William (1979). “Using Humor to Save Lives.” Address at American Orthopsychiatric Association Meeting, Washington D.C.
Hyers, Conrad (1974). Zen and the Comic Spirit. Philadelphia: Westminister.
Mindess, Harvey (1971). Laughter and Liberation. Los Angeles: Nash Publishing.