Funny, right? How do trainee and qualified therapists experience laughter in their practice with clients?

Abstract

Based on a substantial amount of evidence suggesting that humour can have a great amount of therapeutic benefit, three trainee and three qualified counsellors took part in semi-structured interviews to discuss their experiences of humour within their work with their clients, and a variety of experiences were disclosed. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was utilised to generate themes that reflect participants' experiences. The findings suggest that humour can be a natural part of the therapeutic relationship; there are key moments of humour that can shape the counselling process such as moments of real catharsis, and client use of defensive humour; clients can use humour in creative ways; and there are important risk factors that counsellors must be mindful of when humour is present in the therapy room, including the need to be aware of clients using gallows humour. Implications for training and practice are discussed, and potential areas for further research are suggested. A common suggestion put forward by participants was that therapeutic humour can be effectively and appropriately utilised even early in a counsellor's career, but that this is never mentioned in training courses, which they felt should be rectified.