Optimysticals (2) – Liberating laughter*

Optimysticals (2) – Liberating laughter*
Torrey Orton
July 12 , 2009

I noticed about 25 years ago in the midst of a therapy session (I was the patient client) that I broke out laughing at a critical turning point in the process. It was one where I suddenly saw my absurdity, silliness, conflictedness…just which word it is is a subject of this reverie. It was a shock of self-recognition. Increasingly, in the last five years I do the same (or similar, because it is not yet clear what it is) at moments of irresolvable conflict of needs or perspectives in my work as therapist for others. Sometimes it comes into play in group activities, too.

This laugh comes unstoppably, in a rush, energetically, forcefully. I am beginning to be able to catch it before it springs out on an unexpecting patient client (because thoroughly in tune with the rhythm of their own musings?). Usually I cannot remember the exact cue(s) which unleashed it. Only occasionally does anyone query it.

A lifting laugh
The moment always seems one needing a shift of level to advance and my laughing outbreak is met almost exactly with a responding laugh, or at least smile(s) broadly flashed. On querying I offer a badly worded explanation like that I’ve subjected us to above (it is badly worded for me, too; this is the best I can do yet; I’m hopeful this process will yield improved understanding through expression for both you and me).

The nature of the laugh is this: it comes sharply, irrepressibly and in short burst of two or three whoops and then stops, unless reciprocated by the other(s). It happens also in non-therapeutic settings where serious matters are being engaged – serious defined as presently pressing and discouragingly unresolvable; these are matters of the state of our world(s), our places in them, our responsibilities to others….meaning of life if we could make it / find it kind of stuff. An infectious laugh I guess, though it may be an imposing laugh or a domineering one (in effect) for others because of its spontaneity and volume, and my general volume on many dimensions, too.

A visceral vision?
So it is a laugh which both expresses a seeing, an insight, and generates insight, vision, itself! It is visceral vision? And when it ‘works’ in therapy, it does because I am already in synch with patient client states; we are mirroring well; empathy is complementary.

It also works among therapists at moments of stuckness in their group process. I was in one of these a few days ago as we struggled with making a new shared treatment process work between us…very complicated for an apparently simple thing. We were talking over and around each other trying to make sense of our relationships. The ‘agenda’ kept slipping from one matter to another as the connections and complexities overwhelmed our still emerging shared understanding of our work. After a while of well-intentioned but frustrating thrashing around and trying to include all the therapeutic examples we have in train now, I noticed and said that we were in a parallel process with those of our patient clients (who one insightful colleague shortened to “platients”). On the second go, everyone burst out laughing together… a transcending and lightening energy.

So, the laugh accompanies many states / stages of incomplete activities, with elements of stuckness, helplessness and consequential frustration. These are usually associated with actually uncompleted tasks like being an adult, a human being, a learned person, a worthy person… all the end game judgments and daily engagements of life which much of modernity expects as to complete before the end of life – itself a dilemma which no amount of obsessive youthfulness will avoid.

I guess this all makes me an optimyst. I’ve long struggled with the tension between my sceptical and my believer selves. The former provides constant direction (traditional optimist style) and the latter throws up insights which undermine the direction(s) by disclosing a passel of others for consideration (my pessimist style). The above excursion reveals another level which is mystical, mythical – something spiritual but not religious? Touching on the archetypal outputs of consciousness? Someone will tell me hopefully. Followers, please act up.

* 'laughter' got 423,00 web hits in Australia alone; it’s hard to imagine this kind of laughter being made a trained competence for therapists but have a look at Google yourself; perhaps this is just another example of the fact that there’s nothing which cannot be turned into a marketable techno-rational commodity; see happiness, life skills, virtues….

PS.
You may have a favourite optimystical. I’d like to post them. We’d probably have to negotiate a bit to develop a shared standard for them. Once negotiated, you can become an authorised poster on this site in the optimystical stream. Howzat?


* an optimystical is a purveyor of hopes I wished someone would purvey once I heard/understood they were doing it. It is often a counter-intuitive, maybe ironic, communication.