We got to work.
A nervous young woman fidgeted in her chair. It was clear
she did not want to be in a psychiatrist’s consulting room.
“I’ll be honest with you, Dr. Kuhn. The only reason I’m
here is because I respect Dr. Adams, my oncologist. I don’t have
much faith in psychiatry, but she thinks you can help me. She calls
you the Laugh Doctor. If you’re planning to tell me I can laugh
away my cancer, I’ll just leave right now.”
“I don’t see anything funny about breast cancer,” I said
quietly. “However, I have discovered this to be true. If you can hold
onto your sense of hum or while you are going through the surgery,
the chemotherapy, the fear, uncertainty and pain of it all, you’ll do
better, live longer and have a better quality of life. If you’ll let me,
I’d like to help you keep your sense of humor.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she countered. “How do
you keep a sense of humor when there’s nothing to laugh about?”
“That’s an excellent question,” I said. “I think I know how
to help you answer it.”
And so we, too, got to work.
These two vignettes are not isolated cases. Both individuals
made the same mistake we all make when it comes to humor. They
had forgotten the relationship between fun and success; between
fun and accomplishm ent; between fun and adaptability. As a society
we are suffering from this same oversight. We have lost our
understanding of the true nature of humor.
5
