MIND MOVES Marie MurrayMost psychologists will know about the man who approaches a young woman sitting alone at a table in the college canteen to ask her if she would like a coffee, to which she shouts, in a very loud voice: "No, I will not sleep with you."
Embarrassed he slinks away to be approached by her several minutes later with an apology and the explanation that she is a psychology student researching reactions to embarrassing situations, whereupon he shouts out in the loudest voice: "Okay, okay, €100 then."
While this may not be the funniest story recounted, it does contain some of the essential ingredients that make humour objectively funny and appealingly reassuring. Just what these ingredients are is always difficult to define, but some level of self-recognition is crucial: that is, having the capacity to imagine oneself, either as one of the participants or one of the onlookers, in the story. Ambivalent responses are common: for example, empathy with the person who is embarrassed yet enjoyment of the power held by the person who caused the embarrassment.
A further ingredient in the majority of jokes is that the tables are turned: the victim becomes the victor. This ingredient in the story above delights us, because the man who was initially the unwitting subject of the experiment surprisingly subjects the experimenter to her own experiment. We are not told her reaction.
That would alter the impact and destroy the joke. Instead our imaginations are left chuckling at the possibilities. Indignation on her part would be inappropriate, for had she not expected others to succumb to her research? Anger would be inexcusable, for if the research is such that it would anger another, then should it be conducted in the first place? Embarrassment should certainly occur if her own research design and methodology are valid and reliable in scientific terms. Otherwise her own experiment has failed. Justice is done, but done with humour. The reprisal does not exceed the original act.
Humour must be credible not cruel. Sharp not spiteful. It must be of the "ouch" variety, an epiphany, wherein a truth is revealed, a revelation takes place. A further dimension to jokes is that those listening to them recognise some aspect of themselves or other people.
Jokes must contain something quirky about life that has not previously been articulated in this way. Jokes are funny because they expose the inexpressible, express the inexplicable and reveal that which we usually conceal. They say the "unsayable", promise the impossible and lead us where we normally fear to tread.
In this way jokes invite vicarious incursions into the terrains of taboo. Those life and death experiences we most fear, those things that irritate, infuriate, confuse, intimidate, anguish or embarrass us are laughed at. That which we dread is said. Things that are not discussed in normal circumstances, nor in polite circles, suddenly are commented upon in the company of others whose reactions we can observe. This is why so many jokes about death, sex, religion, race, politics, power and complex relationships abound. Jokes are about life.
Stories and jokes negotiate the most intricate psychological balances. Too close to reality is uncomfortable, too distant is irrelevant. There is a delicate and deliberate distance between danger and safety, respect and irreverence.
What is required is a jibe that is nonetheless just a joke. Such story telling regresses us to the thrill of challenging "authority". This is why children cover their mouths, whispering in guilty giggles at the lamentably lavatorial vulgarities that typify many first incursions into the silly side of humour.
With adulthood it is expected that trite tastelessness and salaciousness will be replaced by appropriate asperity and social accuracy, which is why a comedian outside his culture is on uncertain psychological soil and can inadvertently offend to the deepest degree.
Nonetheless, an element of hand-over-mouth infantile tension remains an essential ingredient of humour. That is, it works well when it dares to say or do that which in ordinary circumstances cannot be said or done. There is a guilty edge to laughter when we have crossed imaginatively, a boundary that we would not dream of approaching in our everyday lives.
Amusement is also evoked by witty conversational interjections, by particularly apt stories and even by those deliberate extracts from the joke-teller's repertoire of tales, which are usually prefaced by "have you heard the one about?" For a joke has a short life. It may be enjoyed but once. Thereafter amusement comes from witnessing the reaction of other people to hearing the joke.
Jokes not only provide happiness in us when we hear them, and cheerfulness in us when we tell them, but our enjoyment is extended by anticipating and watching for that moment of amused realisation by another person when they "get the joke".
But a joke is more than humour. There may be profundity behind profanity, truth beneath trivia and lessons in laughter.
Take the story that began this article. We are amused by allegory, not least in the parable it provides for every psychologist who remembers that ethically the first question to be asked before undertaking any research investigation is: how would I feel if this were done to me? Funny that.
mmurray@irish-times.ie
Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview.