Having finally gotten around to reading Richard Russo's 1997 novel Straight Man, I started thinking about the psychic functions of humor. This is a topic I have thought a lot about in the past—I wrote a paper about humor in groups in 1991.
The novel is written in first person and the narrator is William Henry Devereaux, Jr., known as Hank. He has never gotten over his father's abandonment of him when he was a boy. As a man, Hank is a constant stream of dry humor, dripping with contempt and usually filled with sexual innuendo. His humor has three characteristics: it is compulsive; it is filled with the themes that are most anxiety provoking to him; and it releases a great deal of repressed hostility. His humor creates distance from everyone in his life, but it protects him from his yearning for his father's attention; his fear of being an adulterer like his father; his wish to be more successful than his father/ fear of wanting to kill his father; his anger at his mother; and his wish to kill himself. His compulsive humor is a defense.
People have different ways of handling their anxiety and pain. Originally conceived by Sigmund Freud, much of the development of the concept of defense mechanisms was fully developed by his daughter, Anna Freud in her book, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. Both Freuds thought defense mechanisms were protective measures to prevent you from connecting with your sexual and aggressive drives, but they can also protect you from of the anxiety of confronting your failures and guilt. They can hide many different feelings from anger to lust to sadness.
Hank's humor is not a defense mechanism, but rather a characterological defense that incorporates several different defense mechanisms—projection, sublimation, undoing, denial, isolation of affect, and perhaps others. He has built his personality around his humor to ward off his anxiety and pain. CLICK HERE FOR FULL LIST OF DEFENSE MECHANISMS.
Sublimation — Redirecting unacceptable, instinctual drives into personally and socially acceptable channels.
Intense rage redirected in the form of participation in sports such as boxing or football
Projection — Attributing your own unacceptable thoughts or feelings to someone or something else
You get really mad at your husband but scream that he's the one mad at you.
Undoing — Trying to reverse or "undo" a thought or feeling by performing an action that signifies an opposite feeling than your original thought or feeling
You have feelings of dislike for someone so you buy them a gift
Isolation of Effect — Attempting to avoid a painful thought or feeling by objectifying and emotionally detaching oneself from the feeling
Acting aloof and indifferent toward someone when you really dislike that person.
Denial — Not accepting reality because it is too painful.
You are arrested for drunk driving several times but don't believe you have a problem with alcohol.
Not all humor is a defense, but Hank's humor is compulsive. Many of us know people like Hank who use humor to keep us at arms length and ward off their fearful or painful feelings. Some critics compared Hank to Hawkeye in the television series "M*A*S*H." Compulsive humor is usually at other people's expense, although sometimes self-denigrating as well. The person who is hiding behind the humor is usually struggling to keep disturbing feelings at bay—Hawkeye was dealing the death and devastation of the Korean War and Hank was dealing with the abandonment by his father and the anxiety of his return. The defense works for a while, but unfortunately, the feelings usually return in dreams, anxiety attacks, hypochondriacal symptoms, etc.