Therapeutic Laughter:

Abstract

Some therapeutic approaches regard singular and strong laughter as a welcomed therapeutic event. On the basis of a recent review of thc clinical literature, eight categories of therapist statements were proposed as proceding strong laughter events as compared with non-laughter and mild or moderate laughter. From a pool of 280 hours of audiotaped sessions conducted by 15 professionnal therapists with 75 adult patients, the design enabled examination of therapist statements preceding 60 instances of strong laughter, 30 instances of non-laughter, and 30 instances of mild/moderate laughter. Results confirmed the use of defined categories or therapist statements antecedent to the strong laughter event. Therapeutic conditions and sequencing of therapist statements leading to strong laughter are discussed with special reference for those therapies which value the occurrence of strong patient laughter.