Skip to main content

Verified by Psychology Today

Anger

Is Your Comedian Your Therapist?

We trust comedians to tell us the truth.

What is it about comedians? Masters of capturing our attention, we grant them access to our minds, and almost always we are guaranteed stress relief, a salve for our emotional wounds. Through creative storytelling, they gently tell us truths that can be difficult to hear -- that we don't want to hear:

The politician we voted for is an absolute idiot; that men really do certain annoying things; and that women do other annoying things of a different variety. In any other social arrangement, being told we're wrong, that we're not seeing ourselves accurately - and need to change - could fall on deaf ears. But not these artists.

We trust comedians with our minds, our moods, and to tell us the truth. Hmm, sounds a little like a good psychotherapist, doesn't it?

One might even go so far as to say that comedians have even more liberty to speak the truth than the rest of us. We let them shine light on the deepest, most uncomfortable truths in fact -- the most biting and simultaneously cathartic -- more than most therapists bound by professional and social protocols of decorum.

If we consider the weight of responsibility for a client's future life path that a psychotherapist bears, how much more risk, responsibility, interpersonal skill does a comedian hold?

The recent controversy involving David Letterman and Sarah Palin marks a new level of de facto restriction on the craft, a force counter to the inherent spontaneity, surprise and the unintended which are the core of comedy. The "mistakes" of Letterman, Bill Maher, and others imply a new expectation of perfection in our entertainers by the public. They need to look perfect, act perfect, and design their jokes so perfectly that they must have no risk offending even the smallest unique segment of society.

Nearly round the clock, the tickertape news feed at the bottom of every TV news segment exposes us to the seriousness going on in the world - the economy, wars, pandemic viruses, oh yes... and ever-present terrorism reports.

There are also very "serious" people dead-set on keeping us glued to the tragic, no-win scenarios we face. They are the naysayers, the complainers, the easily offended -- the anti-comedians. "Prickly People" come out of the woodwork to be outraged the most, it seems, just when our comedians are doing their best -- distracting us from worries that don't really matter, and pointing us at the things that do.

Recently I tried something different in my creative, artistic, and leisure areas of life. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Denis Leary, Dane Cook, Bill Maher, Sarah Silverman and numerous others have been my late night companions of late. I've been surrounded by very serious "advisors" of all stripes for so long, I wondered what it would be like to envision "comedians as advisors" instead.

The results were not just fun and uplifting, but very educational. Looking closely at how they do what they do, one sees the skills of a good therapist: setting limits and good boundaries, being in the moment, genuine and authentic, encouraging life balance when we get too uptight and narrow in thinking, but reining in the choatic with some punchlines of truth when we lose our grounding.

What if the Prickly People so easily offended by the slightest ribbing, the hint of a sarcastic grin, raised enough righteous indignation that comedy itself would be shouted down to the point of extinction?

Perhaps the art of comedy would shrink to a series of Mea Culpa's ending in the new, universal punchline, "I've done wrong, and learned my lesson. I'm seeking counseling."

Of course there is such a thing as "crossing the line" into cruelty, shock, injury, and downright thoughtless offense -- especially when the punchline is decidedly unfunny. One might think of Michael Richards.

Yet what is that "line" one must not "cross?"

It is the feature of our psychology we call "personal boundary."

When our boundaries are violated, we are offended, we have been invaded in our privacy, our security, our property, emotions and rightfully held opinions, even perhaps to the level of our identity.

Still, it's important to remember that like every border of a nation, every boundary has two sides. The public speaker, the politician, the actor, artist, writer, and comedian is just as human, just as imperfect, just as opinionated, full of emotion, and in need of privacy, security, property ownership and has an identity as the rest of us. Perhaps they are susceptible to violation too, even if they are in an authority position, one built on popularity and bestowing them with an influential voice.

Case in point: I recently saw comedian Dane Cook spin a funny yarn about an email he got not long after both his parents died of cancer in the past year. The name and email address of the "fan" were literally the word, "anonymous," and what was inside was shocking: "I hate your jokes. Your parents died because your jokes are that bad!"

Now, while Cook poked fun at himself as a clumsy, ne'er-do-well -- an innocent bystander in a burgeoning high tech world of electronic communication and a newcomer to the challenges of fame -- one couldn't escape the level of cruelty at the core of his story.

And that's just one well-placed, anonymous jab right at the most tender soft spot of the comedian's boundary. Most of us have felt the weight of dealing with just one difficult person and come out of the conflict a bit winded. What would it be like to have no boundaries, no restrictions on thousands, or even millions of Prickly People firing their hostilities at us?

I think we owe our comedians respect and honor on this burden.

Maybe we, the entertained, have some responsibility to keep up our end of the boundary arrangement with our entertainers too, lest we lose their culture-healing craft.

In Shakespeare we often see the most powerful characters in the form of the jester, the court fool -- the comedians of the time. They trumped even the kings and queens with their ability to deliver a raw kernel of truth, wrapped in laughter, tied up with a storytelling bow, as a gift for the serious soul of the powerful. Usually, this resulted in new insight in the ruler, a new worldview and self-knowledge, which with these, opened up new directions for the kingdom, their people, and an end to the drama which bettered the lives of the audience.

The likes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher are in this spirit -- comedians known to have usurped the young mass audience. Those who seek real news from cable comedy shows than from mainstream news agencies.

When we are too prickly, we take offense to anything and everything. We become the arrogant king who lops off the head of his court jester for crossing the line of amusement, and into direct criticism of his majesty.

A media friend recently gave me another phrase for the Prickly People - the easily offended. "C-A-V-E-people." Citizens Against Virtually Everything.

Just yesterday I listened to yet another comedian who really demonstrates mastery of handling the challenge of the Prickly People, the C-A-V-E-people: Denis Leary, in his hilarious audio-book, Why We Suck.

He opens with a tirade that contains just the right razor's edge balance of anger, candor, and wit. We are warned that if we are too fragile, too ignorant, or too immature to handle his views, his humor, and his honest attempt at truth-telling, we are invited to refund the product.

From there, it is a cathartic pleasure to hear someone freely rant on the differences between men and women, the problem with politics, war, and family dysfunction. There's something likely to offend every person on earth, and yet every serious issue we struggle with is represented. He spurs us to look at it all, turning it over and examining it, comparing his views with our own - and laughing ourselves silly at how very seriously we take ourselves, our opinions and convictions in a diverse world.

It's not unlike what a therapist might wish he could say, what he really thinks of the human condition.

Leary set a firm boundary right at the beginning, and that's what makes it effective, powerful, and healing. It's not just laughter as the best medicine. It's truth, wrapped in laughter, tied with creative storytelling, and given as a gift of insight.

Mature boundaries let us know that we can trust our advisors, mentors, politicians, therapists and even comedians.

Like a good parent, they will often have things to tell us that we really don't want to hear. But if it's said in the right way, with a smile, and a hopefulness, then it will help us make necessary changes. And maybe it will be less hard, serious, and lonely.

They've been right in the past, and like therapists -- we need to know they aren't in it for selfish reasons. It's their good boundaries that show us they aren't.

Comedians, like all true artists, do the craft out of love and because they care. Both like good parents and good therapists, they demand and deserve respect in kind.

We can relax, grow, and function better relieved of our seriousness and anxiety, and in the future, be struck by insights we hadn't thought of without the intervention of the comedian.

Good comedy. Good therapy.

advertisement
More from Paul Dobransky M.D.
More from Psychology Today