Can the use of humor in psychotherapy be taught?

Objective: Despite an abundance of literature detailing the potential benefits of the use of humor in therapy, humor is rarely taught to psychiatric residents as a method of therapeutic intervention. This communication attempts to explain how current understanding of attachment theory and neuroscience may assist psychiatric faculty and supervisors in their teaching of humorous therapeutic interventions.

Methods: This article reviews and synthesizes the extant literature on the use of humor, as well as recent work in neuroscience, attachment theory, and mentalization.

Results: Humor can be conceptualized as an instance of implicit relational knowing and may thus contribute significantly to the therapeutic action of psychotherapy as a subcategory of "moments of meeting" between therapist and patient. However, training residents to use humor in psychotherapy requires more individualized attention in supervision and classroom seminars. Factors such as individual proclivities for humorous repartee, mentalizing capacity, and an authentic interest in adding humor to the session may be necessary to incorporate spontaneous humor into one's technique.

Conclusions: New findings from the areas of attachment theory, neuroscience, and right-hemisphere learning are providing potential opportunities for sophisticated teaching of the use of humor in psychotherapy.