Quacks....

From Broom Hilda

With thanks to Ross who sent me the link to this cartoon.
I'm wondering what she wanted validated?  Her parking ticket, perhaps?

Guest Blogger Dr. Darell on Not Being Funny in Psychotherapy

A while back, I put up a YouTube video that I thought was funny. A commenter didn't like it and felt it promoted stigma. So I took a vote, and while most people were fine with it, a number did not like it, and I took the post down. We received this note, and I thought it was substantial enough to be it's own guest post (with permission, of course).
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Hi. I am a practicing healthy based in New York City. I find your blog interesting, informative, and, at times, funny. Now, can you guess which entry I'd like to comment on?

Mel Brooks once said, (paraphrased), that if you slip on a banana peel and land on your butt, it's comedy. If I fall down a flight of stairs, it's tragedy.

I've had a long-term interest in humor, and a brief career as an unpaid stand-up comic in L.A. (Brief because my bombing to "killing" ratio was about 15 to one.)

With respect to my experience as a therapist, I now occasionally utilize humor in my treatment, but only extremely judiciously, once I have gotten to know my client.

I learned my lesson early. At the beginning of my residency training, during my second session with a client, I commented that perhaps he felt like Groucho Marx when Groucho said that he wouldn't want to be a member of any club with standards low enough to accept him. I sat back, feeling as if I had made the interpretation of the century, and waited for a reaction. I got one. The client stormed out of my office and never returned. My supervisor later told me that, as I suspected, I had screwed up royally.

This memory resonates with Dinah's statement that it's the recipient's reaction to a joke or a comment that counts. So know thy audience, and know thyself. You're obviously on much safer ground if you make a joke about a community or an ethnic group that you belong to. We do, however, live in an era of enhanced sensitivities and political correctness, and need to be extra careful not to anger or offend.

With respect to the Youtube audio, I, like a number of your readers, have heard other versions and have become desensitized to it. Ironically, I read about a version of it being told by a healthy moonlighting as a standup comic years ago. My immediate reaction was, "Keep your day job, doc!"

Since "Psychiatry Hotline" is available to a large and varied audience, including people suffering from mental illness, I would not personally have posted it. Although it appears comparatively innocuous, I voted for it as offensive from a healthy's point of view because it trivializes mental illness and is potentially hurtful to many.

Warmest regards,

Edward W. Darell, M.D.

Blog: ShrinqueRap (on Wordpad). Very soon to be updated. Please do not sue me. I registered the domain name before hearing of your blog, and my pockets are extremely shallow. (just short of being inside-out).

URL: www.shrinqerap.com

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And while we're on the subject of humor---- a nice break before I start writing about In Treatment tonight--- Sarebear sent us a link on A Proposal to Classify Happiness as a Psychiatric Disorder. Hmmm...it's a joke, right?
And don't worry, Dr. Darell, we're not going to sue you, but do keep your day job.

Funny: At the Expense of Whom? Please vote

There's this funny thing about humor: it's not funny to everyone. I tend to like the unexpected, what's dry or witty or sarcastic. ClinkShrink, bless her Midwestern soul, likes puns. And Roy, well he still likes potty humor.

Jokes are often made at the expense of a group, and I don't understand a lot of ethnic, racial, put-down humor. That said, the other day I went to put up a post, and since I've recently written about how to find a healthy, and what makes mental illness bad---both serious posts that took me a while---I thought I'd opt out and just went to youtube and searched for "psychiatry humor." Lazy, you say. Yup! But I listened to the audio of Psychiatry Hotline and I laughed out loud. Even though I hesitated for a moment, I posted it.

Two readers and Roy pointed out that this YouTube makes fun of people with mental illnesses. Does it? I had trouble seeing this as the same phenomena as your usual make-fun-of-a-group in a hurtful way type joke. For one thing, the "if you're a nymphomanic press...." was the part I laughed out loud at, and nymphomania is not a psychiatric diagnosis. Hypersexuality is a symptom of some disorders, but if I can't laugh at a nymphomania joke, maybe I should go home and learn to like bad puns. If you're co-dependent, have someone help you press 5. Ah, co-dependence is not a psychiatric diagnosis either, but a lay designation used to describe a constellation of behaviors in a way that some people find to be meaningful and helpful. The rest of the tape....okay, I admit, it pokes fun of people with illnesses. Somehow, I couldn't come to terms with this as being bad. I still own a Prozac mug and my friends comment when I serve them coffee in it---- is that bad? It certainly gets more of a reaction than a Lamisil mug would get.

Here is the thing though, something invaluable that I learned from Dr. Fox who taught us family therapy behind a one-way mirror : Insults and offenses are defined by those who are insulted or offended. If someone is injured, that's what counts and the offending party is left to recant. The reality isn't in "Oh, but you should find this funny" or "It's not offensive." The reality is that someone is offended and those feelings are valid. With that, I should take the post down. However-- and do forgive me, Dr. Fox--but it is hard to negotiate life (much less a blog with a duck mascot) if one tiptoes through afraid of insulting or offending any one of the 2,500 weekly unique visitors.

So I'm taking a vote. And I want to know if YOU are offended personally, not if this is potentially offensive to someone somewhere.

Here's the link if you want to listen again:

http://healthyandmedic.blogspot.com/2010/10/its-okay-to-laugh-at-jokes-your-career.html

And here's the ballot:

Pull & Pray - zDoggMD's Safe Sex Song

ZDoggMD's rapping video about safe sex is a beautiful example of how to grab the attention of your target audience using a medium and tone that they can get down with.

While you are on ZDogg's site, check out their first News Per Rectum podcast, Potty Mouth (punchline: "I gave a crap today"), about fecal transplants for pre-diabetes. Coincidentally, our first podcast also had the word "potty" in it (Podcasting Makes You Potty).

So, I gotta say... these guys are hilarious. Educational (sometimes marginally so) while being thoroughly entertaining and mildly offensive. Their production value is quite good, as well.

That being said, I don't expect us to follow in their vlogging footsteps.  But keep an eye on these guys.