Provocative Therapy: Therapist as Jester

"Among the several possible models (e.g., healer) for the psychotherapist, consider the court jester. This figure we are told, made playful comments about the king, his followers, and affairs of state; he punctured pretensions, and took an upside-down look at human events. Now the patient, it might be said, suffers from gravity. To him life is a burden, his personality a riddle; yet viewed from the outside, he may seem altogether obvious and his problems nothing much. Indeed, just because he hurts and has a dreadful sense of failure, eventually he must find laughter in the midst of his accustomed tears and glimpse his own absurdity. Without irreverence, both he and the therapist stay mired in earnestness." --K.A. Fisher (Cf. "The Iconoclast's Notebook." Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice. 7: 54-56, 1970.

"The comic and the tragic masks together more adequately represent and symbolize the human condition." --Frank Farrelly (explaining the use of humor in Provocative Therapy).