After my essay on the 9/11 Anniversary, I decided to make room for my basic Yin-Yang nature: here is an article on eight styles of humor. (The 9/11 essay, “Ten Years After: A Personal Remembrance of Sep 11th – Strategies for Grieving, Surviving and Evolving: (http://www-stressdoc-com.blogspot.com/2011/09/ten-years-after-personal-remembrance-of.html). The early-mid 20th century pioneering film-maker, artist and comedienne, Charlie Chaplin, would approve of such a dramatic-comedic shift. According to Chaplin, The paradoxical thing about making comedy is that it is precisely the tragic which arouses the funny. We have to laugh due to our helplessness in the face of natural forces and in order not to go crazy.

The humor styles are paired in “Four ‘H”” polarities: Healing-Hostile, Harmonizing-Harpooning, Humanizing-Higher Power, and Humbling-Heroic. (Forgive my alliterative, categorizing compulsion. An Israeli friend thinks it’s in my cultural-religious-“Talmudic scholar” DNA. I believe it is part addiction-part geographic location, i.e., having resided in the Metro-Washington, DC-federal government nexus for twenty years, I’m the founding member of a new twelve-step AA group – Acronym’s Anonymous!) My hope is that by differentiating the applications of humor, more people will find and explore a style or styles suited to their temperament, taste and tactics. This is hardly an academic exercise. Daniel Goleman, acclaimed author of Emotional Intelligence, has discovered that the most effective managers employ humor three times more often than their less capable counterparts. So let’s get to work by examining definitions and differentiations.

Defining Humor and Wit

a. Humor recognizes the absurdities in everyday situations along with the incongruities in our personal make-up, and playfully embraces or pokes good-natured fun at our fears and foibles. It often has a silly, non-verbal component exaggerating voice tones, facial gestures and body movements. Humor may be drawn out for effect. I liken it to letting the air out of a blown up balloon, and watching it crazily circle, sputter and plop. Of course, pushed way beyond human limits it may go from the silly to the ridiculous.
b. Wit quickly and imaginatively expresses the connection or analogous properties between things seemingly dissimilar, improbable or contradictory. America's original humorist, Mark Twain, said it best: "Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation." (Now whether this coupling will produce any brainchildren…) Wit is highly verbal tending toward a sudden, sharp edginess (which, alas, can easily go over the healing edge into hostility or ridicule.). According to Shakespeare, "Brevity is the soul of wit." Think of wit as sticking a pin into that inflated balloon (or a puffed up ego). An example of concise wit, perhaps, is my self-invented title of "Psychohumorist" ™. (Of course, I let folks decide where the emphasis on that word should go. Sometimes the fine line between wit and humor fades into the head work. ;-)

Humor Wit

Saying funny things
       

Saying things in a funny way

What is being observed
       

What is being mentally constructed

Strong nonverbal component
       

Highly verbal

Slow, physical exaggeration, silly
       

Quick, sharp, surprising analogies

Letting air out of balloon (sputtering)
       

Sticking pin into balloon (deflating)

Extreme: ridiculous
       

Extreme: ridicule


Finally, an ability to integrate humor and wit may just strengthen our resiliency while helping civilize the world.

Here are illustrations of the 4H(2) Humor Styles:

I. Healing-Hostile Humor

A. Healing.

1. Absurdity to the Rescue. The first example of healing humor actually has a 9/11 context: upon reopening after the tragic events, the BWI airport hired Groucho Marx impersonators to banter with the crowds waiting on line to help reduce understandable traveler anxiety. The absurdity of it all struck a positive nerve and facilitated a much needed emotional release. As psychiatrist and humor authority, David Fry, noted, “Laughing with gusto is like turning your body into a big vibrator, giving vital organs a brief but hardy internal massage.” Others have likened full-throttled laughter to “inner jogging,” as it releases chemicals such as endorphins and dopamine which have a mind-calming, pleasure inducing effect.

2. The Face-Saving Yet Ego Affirming Defense Mechanism. Healing humor not only helps transform order (and disorder) into the comically chaotic and cathartic, but it is based on ego strength and the awareness of limitations, not simply on anxiety-driven self-deprecation. Such a humorous perspective reflects a loosening of inhibition and lowers the volume of rigid or judgmental inner voices. This humor also looks at life events the same as everyone else and bravely if not ironically may see something different. For example, the early 20th c. French novelist, Anatole France, upon turning 75, looking in a mirror, observed: "Mirrors just aren't what they used to be."

This is not a passive stance but an active one, providing "Triple A" stress relief insurance:
a) Aggression. There's a confident, if not somewhat competitive, component to self-effacing humor. It tells an audience or an antagonist, "I can poke fun at myself even better than you can poke fun at me." Or, "You only know the half of it…my pain, my cleverness, etc."

b) Affirmation. When audiences laugh warmly at such humor, they vicariously acknowledge their own shortcomings and, most important, are likely admiring the humorist's display of openness and courage.
c) Acceptance. The ability to expose flaws and foibles often is a tangible sign of self-acceptance; perfect performance has been replaced with the modus operandi of purposefulness and playfulness.

No less an authority than Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis and a student of humor, recognized the power of this “highest defense mechanism.” For Freud, the capacity for mature humor – by which he meant internalizing the “parental” encouragement of our efforts and the gentle tolerance of our failures – is perhaps the greatest gift such figures (whether actual or cultivated inner voices) can bestow upon a child…or a “Healing Humorist” can share with a colleague. Of course, sometimes those “parental voices”
come with a little static.

3. Share and Smooth with Edgy Humor. Consider a “healing” example that involves a ritual of sending humorous cards to family members, especially to my parents. The cards are particularly effective because they capture or play upon a certain tension that exists within the relationship. A recent Mother’s Day card said, “To the woman who helped me become the man I am today.” The opened card continues: “Of course you have to take some of the blame!” Being able to poke a little fun at us both and also share the laughter definitely continues to smooth some of those rough edges in the mother-son tie.

B. Hostile.

1. Even Cutting Humor Can Heal. Here's a classroom vignette pitting me against a demoralized yet demonizing antagonist that raises two key questions: First, there's the issue of "is message sent message received?" As will be evident shortly, this question needs to be considered within the psycho-social-cultural context being used by different parties to interpret the meaning of certain actions and to attribute the motivational stance or bias of certain actors. Next, did my overt and covert counterpunch fulfill my intent: to disarm hostility and preserve harmony without being harsh or hurtful? Let me illustrate. I was leading a two-day Stress Management workshop in Salt Lake City, Utah for a federal government agency that was experiencing interpersonal tension and morale problems. The first day seemed to go well. The most tangible evidence was that the next morning a few folks initiated buying donuts for all forty participants. So a variety of donuts were being distributed before the class formally starts. All of a sudden, a male audience member, who later identified himself as a Mormon, began vehemently protesting: "You call yourself a stress expert, and you're going to allow them to pass out those donuts; with all that fat and sugar!"

I was taken aback. I acknowledged his beliefs and his concern for the nutritional issues as regards physical and psychological well-being. (A few years earlier, for a legal magazine, I had written about changing my diet and exercise regimen. I always liked the title of the article: “Hard Realities vs. Hard Arteries: Fat Food for Thought.”) Before I could finish, our pedantic protester cut me off, continued the challenge, and then declared: “How can I trust anything you say about stress, when you take such a hypocritical position!” Trying to be reasonable, again agreeing with some of his concerns, still I recognized the buying and sharing of donuts as a real form of social nurturance and support. Both of these are important for relieving stress and building emotional health and group morale.

Our nutritional moralist seemed undaunted. I also realized that this ongoing confrontation was agitating the entire group, though no one said anything. I didn’t want to lose control of the atmosphere of positive learning and sharing, nor did I want the audience to lose trust in my capacity for leadership. The tension reached a critical point. I reflexively went into a self-effacing survival mode and replied with maybe a shade too much impatience and irony: “Well, I guess the only way I can justify my behavior is to paraphrase the American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson: ‘[Too much] consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’”



A woman from the audience fairly shouted, “That’s a good one.” The confrontational standoff was over. My antagonist was disarmed and deflated. At the time, I mostly thought I was poking fun at myself to get Mr. Moralist off my (and the audience’s) back. But in hindsight, I wasn’t simply self-lampooning, but was also wielding a witty (albeit unconscious) weapon. A more direct message could have been: “Obviously, you are not pleased with my approach. I wish it wasn’t creating such doubt. I’m willing to talk more during the break or at lunch. However, right now I have a class to lead, and we all need to get down to work.” And if this still wasn’t sufficient, that is, if the individual could not cease and desist, I would then have to ask him to leave the room until he was ready to participate in a non-disruptive manner.

Today, when I share this story with counselors, educators, or trainers, a number gasp, groan, or grimace. I truly did cut down Mr. Mormon in public. I was not psychologically correct, for which I have conflicting thoughts. And yet, in the spirit of embracing contradiction, my counter ultimately had a healing effect. By the afternoon, Mr. M. could venture out of his crusty shell, this time without fighting dietary demons or Stress Docs. With the help of a group exercise, he began to acknowledge to the entire class his intense feelings of work burnout. This out of character level of honesty and vulnerability was made possible by disarming his previous offensive defensiveness. And it garnered him, not the moral high ground, but down-to-earth emotional sustenance and problem-solving support from colleagues (who had been inhaling his burnout fumes for months).

The moral: By momentarily disarming an antagonist (perhaps with a tad more antagonism than consciously intended, but without malicious intent), while still pursuing understanding and healing, you can improbably both set limits on and also support a “stress carrier.” The “too much consistency” message (and an audience member’s enthusiastically aggressive second), defused the threat to our learning environment. It also eventually short-circuited a self-defeating burnout-blowup cycle and opened a path and process for honest sharing along with some healing, collegial empathy and acceptance: the competence of the leader, the working integrity and harmony of the group along with the humanity and social standing of a wounded participant are all reaffirmed. And by mixing caring and confrontation...you can even (symbolically or moderately) eat donuts!