Humor Us

An Appeal for the Gospel of Relaxation

Capps

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498290388
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book addresses the fact that Americans tend to live under a considerable amount of stress, tension, and anxiety, and suggests that humor can be helpful in alleviating their distress. It posits that humor is a useful placebo in this regard; cites studies that show that humor moderates life stress; considers the relationship of religion and humor, especially as means to alleviate anxiety; proposes that Jesus had a sense of humor; suggests that his parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard has humorous implications for the relief of occupational stress; explores the relationship of gossip and humor; and suggests that Jesus and his disciples were a joking community. It concludes that Jesus viewed the kingdom of God as a worry-free existence.

1

The Placebo Effect of Humor

“Laughter Is the Best Medicine” has been a long-standing feature of Reader’s Digest. The book Laughter: The Best Medicine, published by the Reader’s Digest Association in 1997, includes jokes and humorous anecdotes from fifty years of its publication.1 However, the idea that laughter is the best medicine got a big shot in the arm, so to speak, when Norman Cousins, a journalist and editor, wrote about his affliction with Ankylosing spondylitis, a life-threatening degenerative disease involving the inflammation of the spine and large joints, resulting in stiffness and pain. Supported by his physician, he checked out of the hospital and into a hotel where he improvised a therapeutic regimen that included vitamin C, films by the Marx Brothers, and episodes of the television program Candid Camera. His book The Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient, published in 1979, became a best seller.2 He became a widely sought speaker on medical issues from the patient’s perspective.

Later in life he moderated his laugh-your-way-to-better-health message, noting that humor should be viewed as a metaphor for the entire range of positive emotions. But the idea that laughter was the key factor in the remission of his disease is what everyone seemed to remember, and something about the scene of a sick man sitting in his hotel room watching videos, laughing his head off, and getting well has almost universal appeal. Moreover, there is scientific evidence that laughter has physical benefits. As Richard P. Olson notes in Laughter in a Time of Turmoil, these physical benefits include lower blood pressure; release of brain chemicals (endorphins) that decrease pain; enhancement of the immune system; reduction of unhelpful hormones; and relaxation and improvement of muscle tone, of respiratory functioning, and of the cardiovascular system.3 This is a very impressive list of physical benefits attributable to laughter.

On the other hand, Norman Cousins’ later moderation of the laugh-your-way-to better-health message suggests that the idea that laughter is the best medicine is something of an exaggeration. In fact, the Bible is instructive at this point. Proverbs 17:22 says: “A cheerful heart is a good medicine; but a downcast spirit dries up the bones” (NRSV).4 It does not say that laughter is the best medicine, only that a cheerful heart is a good medicine. In line with this more modest claim, I suggested in my previous book on humor, Laughter Ever After, that if laughter is probably not the best medicine, perhaps humor is the best placebo. In support of this claim, I noted that humor may not cure our bodily ills, but it can help us cope with them, and I cited the joke about the man who says to his doctor, “My back aches, I have chronic indigestion, my bowels are sluggish, and I don’t feel so good myself.” Humor won’t remove the first three maladies, but it can do something for the fourth, and this can help him cope with the other three.5 And this is where the placebo comes in. So in this chapter I want to expand on my earlier suggestion that humor may well be the best placebo.

Humor as Placebo

But what, exactly, is a placebo? The dictionary defines placebo as “a harmless, unmedicated preparation given as a medicine to a patient merely to humor him, or used as a control in testing the efficacy of another, medicated substance.”6 It is interesting that this definition includes the word “humor,” and that it says that one of the placebo’s purposes is to “humor” the person who is receiving it. This purpose has direct bearing on the title of this book: Humor Us.

But what does it mean to “humor” us? And why would a placebo be useful in this regard? To answer these questions I turned to the word humor in the dictionary. It has several meanings but the one that seemed the most relevant in this case is this: “To comply with the mood or whim of (another); indulge.”7 This definition seemed a bit patronizing as far as the prescribing of a placebo is concerned. So I consulted The Merck Manual of Medical Information, hoping that it would provide a better explanation of how a placebo may “humor” a person. This huge tome has a scant half-page on placebos.8 It defines placebos as “substances that are made to resemble drugs but do not contain an active drug.” It adds that a placebo “is made to look exactly like a real drug but is made of an inactive substance such as starch or sugar,” and it notes that “placebos are usually used in research studies.”9 It explains their effects in this way:

Placebos can result in or be coincidentally associated with many changes, both desirable and undesirable. This phenomenon, called the placebo effect, appears to have two components: anticipation of results, usually optimistic, from taking a drug (sometimes called suggestibility); and spontaneous change. Sometimes people improve spontaneously, without treatment. If spontaneous change—whether positive or negative—occurs after a placebo is taken, the placebo may incorrectly be credited with or blamed for the result.10

As for the first component (anticipation of results), the Manual notes that some people seem more susceptible to the placebo effect than others: “People who have a positive opinion of drugs, doctors, nurses, and hospitals are more likely to respond favorably to placebos than are people who have a negative opinion.” Unfortunately, “some people who are particularly susceptible to placebos tend to become compulsive about using the drug; they tend to increase the dose, and they develop withdrawal symptoms when they are deprived of the placebo.”11

When I read this statement about some people increasing the dose, I found it a bit puzzling: Does this mean that the placebo effect was no longer working at the original dosage? If so, why would this be? If the effect of the drug is due to the patient’s suggestibility, why would a suggestible patient eventually need an increased dosage to experience the same effects? I was also a bit puzzled about the statement that if spontaneous change—whether positive or negative—occurs after the placebo is ingested, the placebo may incorrectly be credited with or blamed for the result. I wondered how anyone would know that the placebo didn’t produce the positive spontaneous change, and I also wondered why anyone would blame the placebo for a negative spontaneous change. After all, the placebo, containing only an inactive ingredient, would seem to be harmless. (The dictionary definition actually states that it is harmless.) So the only blame that would seem to be reasonable would be the blame that the prescribing physician might be subject to for prescribing a placebo instead of a drug that had an active ingredient. But if the physician did not believe that the active ingredient would be health promoting, blaming the physician would seem inappropriate as well.

At the time, I simply wanted to make the case that humor may be an effective placebo, especially in reducing anxiety and stress, so I set these questions about the “real” placebos aside and did not pursue them any further. Instead, I focused on the Manual’s paragraphs on research studies, and especially its observation that when a new drug is being developed, “investigators conduct studies to compare the effect of the drug with that of a placebo because any drug can have a placebo effect, unrelated to its action,” and therefore, “the true drug effect must be distinguished from a placebo effect.”12 Thus,

Half the study’s participants are given the drug and half are given an identical-looking placebo. Ideally, neither ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Placebo Effect of Humor
• Chapter 2: Humor as Moderator of Life Stress
• Chapter 3: Religion and Humor: Estranged Bedfellows
• Chapter 4: Did Jesus Have a Sense of Humor?
• Chapter 5: Putting Humor to Work: The Laborers in the Vineyard
• Chapter 6: Gossip, Humor, and the Joking Community
• Chapter 7: Why the Long Face?
• Epilogue
• References