Finding the funny side of things a good reason to laugh

By O. Setiawan Djuharie

Bandung (JP): Picture this cartoon: A man is watering his lawn just as an attractive blonde walks by. As he ogles her, he accidentally turns the hose on his dowdy wife, who is sitting on the porch.

Men usually think the cartoon is funny. Women do not. And there is a good reason for the opinion.

We start finding things laughable -- or not laughable -- early in life. An infant first smiles at approximately eight days of age. Many psychologists feel this is his first sign of simple pleasure -- for food, warmth and comfort. At six months or less, the infant laughs to express complex pleasures such as the sight of a mother's smiling face.

In his book Beyond Laughter, psychologist Martin Grotjahnsays says that the earlier the infant begins to smile and laugh, the more advanced will be his or her development. Tests revealed that children who did not develop these responses (because they lacked an intimate loving relationship) "developed a schizophrenic up and died".

According to Jacob Levine, a professor at Yale University, between the age of six months and one year, a baby learns to laugh for essentially the same reasons he or she will laugh throughout his or her life. He says that people laugh to express mastery over anxiety.

Picture what happens when a father tosses his child into the air. The child will probably laugh -- but not the first time. Despite the child's enjoyment of "flying", he or she is too anxious to laugh. How does the child know Daddy will catch him or her? Once the child realizes that he or she will be caught, he or she is free to enjoy the game. But more importantly, Levine adds that the child laughs because he or she has at last mastered the anxiety.

Adult laughter is subtler, but we also laugh at what we used to fear. Feelings of achievement, or their lack, remain a crucial factor. Giving a dinner party is an anxious event for a new bride. Will the food be good? Will the guests get along? Will she be a good hostess? All goes well, the party is over. Now she laughs freely. Her pleasure from having proved her success is the foundation for her pleasure in recalling the evening's activities. She couldn't enjoy the second pleasure without the first more important one -- her mastery of anxiety.

Laughter is a social response triggered by cues. Scientists have not determined a brain center for laughter, and they are perplexed by patients with certain types of brain damage who go into laughing fits for no apparent reason. The rest of us require company and a reason to laugh.

When we find ourselves alone in a humorous situation, our usual response is to smile. Isn't it true that our highest compliment to a humorous book is to say "it made me laugh out loud"? Of course, we do occasionally laugh alone, but when we do, we are, in a sense, socializing with our selves. We laugh at a memory, or at a part of ourselves.

Practically every philosopher since Plato has written on how humor and laughter are related, but Sigmund Freud was the first to evolve a conclusive theory. Freud recognized that we all repress certain basic but socially "unacceptable" drives such as sex and aggression. Jokes, not accidentally, are often based on either sex or aggression, or both. We find these jokes funny because they provide a sudden release of our normally suppressed drives. We are free to enjoy the forbidden, and the energy we normally use to inhibit these drives is discharged in laughter.

Another reason laughter is pleasurable is because of the physical sensations involved. Laughter is a series of minor facial and respiratory convulsions that stimulates our respiratory and circulatory systems. It activates the secretion of adrenaline and increases the blood flow to the head and brain. The total effect is one of euphoria.

Of course, we don't always need a joke to laugh. People who survive frightening situations, such as a fire or an emergency plane landing, frequently intersperse their story of the crisis with laughter. Part of the laughter expresses relief that everything is now all right. During the crisis, every one mobilizes energy to deal with the potential problem. If the danger is averted, we need to release that energy. Some people cry; others laugh.

Part of the integral pleasure of a joke is getting the point. But if the sexual or aggressive element of the joke is too thinly disguised, as in "sick" humor, the joke will leave us feeling guilty instead of amused. We may laugh -- but in embarrassment. According to Grotjahn, "The disguise must go far enough to avoid guilt", but "not so far that the thrill of aggression is lost".

Which brings us to why women may not have found the joke about the man watering his wife very funny -- because they get the point only too well. Many psychiatrists agree that the reason women aren't amused by this kind of joke is that most sex jokes (a hefty percentage of all jokes) employ women as their target. Women sometimes make poor joke tellers for the same reason; consciously or unconsciously, they express their resentment by "forgetting" the story.

When we are made the butt of the joke, either on a personal or impersonal level, we are emotionally involved in it. Consequently, we are unable to laugh (except as a pretense). While we are feeling, we can't laugh. The two do not mix. French essayist Henry Bergson called laughter a "momentary anesthesia of the heart." We call it comic relief.

Knowing that laughter blunts emotion, we can better understand why we sometimes laugh during moments of anxiety because we don't feel any mastery over the situation. Very often, compulsive laughter is a learned response. If we laugh, it expresses a good feeling and the fact that we are able to cope. When we're in a situation in which we can't cope, we laugh to reassure ourselves that we can.

How often have we laughed at a funeral, or upon hearing bad news? We laugh to deny an unendurable reality until we are strong enough to accept it. Laughter also breaks our tension. However, we may also be laughing to express relief that the tragedy didn't happen to us. We laugh before giving a big party, before delivering a speech, or while getting a traffic ticket, to say: "This isn't bothering me. See? I'm laughing."

But if we sometimes laugh in sorrow, more often we laugh with joy. Laughter creates and strengthens our social bonds. And the ability to share a laugh has guided many marriages through hard adjustment periods.

According to Levine, we can measure our adjustment to the world by our capacity to laugh. When we are secure about our abilities, we can poke fun at our foibles. If we can laugh through our anxieties, we will not be overpowered by them.

The ability to laugh starts early, but it takes a lifetime to perfect. Grotjahn believes that when social relationships are mastered, when the individual has mastered a peaceful relationship with himself, then he or she has a sense of humor. And then an individual can throw back his or her head and laugh.

-- The writer is a lecturer at Sunan Gunung Djati State Institute for Islamic Studies in Bandung.