Most of us learned about defense mechanisms as college freshmen or sophomores. As I recall, there were 12 defense mechanisms taught as a means of coping. It also seems as if they were presented primarily as an unhealthy means of coping or as avoidance. When hard pressed, I can still recite them. However, the 13th—and perhaps healthiest—defense mechanism many people use throughout the life span was curiously missing from textbooks. It is a defense mechanism that certainly comes in handy as women age and are faced with challenges that can be daunting. The 13th defense mechanism is called humor, and as Erma Bombeck knew and taught us, laughter really is the best medicine.
For the majority of my career, prior to going back to school for a doctorate and subsequently entering the world of academe, I was a medical social worker. As my social work career evolved, I began to focus on geriatrics and kept that focus when I became an academician. Over and over, working in hospitals, I encountered numerous examples of the healthy use of humor as a defense when dealing with adversity. Even in groups comprised of terminally ill patients and groups comprised of family members of terminally ill patients, humor and laughter regularly assisted people who were dealing with tragic circumstances.
I am reminded of one older women taking care of her dying husband. She related a story about regularly turning him in bed to avoid bed sores. One morning on her knees on the bed she pushed a bit harder than usual, almost rolling him out of the bed. He caught the headboard in the nick of time, and they both laughed until they cried. She was just one of many who told caregiving stories that resulted in the entire group laughing. The same was true in groups of terminally ill patients and as I worked with individual patients and their families. While sad stories and tears were common, so were humor and laughter. There was little question that humor was a tremendous help in dealing with the adversity of illness, disability, and even death. It is also not unusual for friends and family to gather after a funeral and tell funny stories about the deceased, remembering with love and laughter the life of someone dear to them.
At one time I had a student sitting in on a group of caregivers of terminally ill family members for her first time. She was shocked and appalled by the humor and laughter she witnessed. In the meeting with her after her first group, she began to express her outrage about family members’ finding humor in such tragic situations. She focused on one old man’s reaction to a fall at home when he was taking his wife to the bathroom. Her belief was that he was laughing at his wife and that he could not love her very much. So began my lecture about the use of the 13th defense mechanism, humor. I let her know that I was not referring to sarcasm, a usually dishonest use of humor to belittle. I was referring to honest, frequently spontaneous humor as a healthy coping mechanism. I also gave her information about the couple who had been dedicated to one another during a marriage than spanned more than 50 years. As it happened, the wife had been admitted to the hospital 3 days before my student attended the group. We went together to visit the wife. When I said, “I heard you had a fall,” she began chuckling and told us that both she and her husband laughed so hard he had difficulty lifting her off the floor.
That student had never been taught about nor thought about humor being an absent 13th defense mechanism and probably the healthiest defense mechanism of all. If any of you write, contribute to, or know someone who writes textbooks, particularly for Psychology 101, I would urge that that list of 12 defense mechanisms be expanded to include humor.