How to Laugh Your Way Through Life: A Psychoanalyst's Advice

170 Pages·2013·0.45 MB·English

by  Paul Marcus

HOW TO LAUGH YOUR WAY
THROUGH LIFE

HOW TO LAUGH YOUR
WAY THROUGH LIFE
A Psychoanalyst’s Advice
Paul Marcus
First published in 2013 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2013 by Paul Marcus
The right of Paul Marcus to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1-78049-095-3
Typeset by V Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd., Chennai, India
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
In gratitude to all of the kids I have been privileged to treat for
helping me to not take myself too seriously.
“This is an ugly and mean world, and only to spite it we mustn’t weep.
If you want to know, this is the constant source of my good spirit, of my
humor. Not to cry, out of spite, only to laugh out of spite, only to laugh.”
—Sholom Aleichem
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Laughing your way through life 1
CHAPTER TWO
Love 21
CHAPTER THREE
Work 51
CHAPTER FOUR
Psychoanalysis 69
CHAPTER FIVE
Suffering 87
CHAPTER SIX
Death 111
vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER SEVEN
The art of tragicomic attunement and intervention 129
REFERENCES 145
INDEX 157
CHAPTER ONE
Laughing your way through life
“There are two appropriate responses to frustration,” said the
American writer Kurt Vonnegut, “you can laugh or you can
cry. I prefer laughter, because there’s less mopping up to do
afterwards!” (Wooten, 1996, p. 23). Indeed, it is a well-known observa-
tion that the capacity to find humour amidst the difficulties of life is
one of the best ways of effectively coping. “Gallows humour”, “black
comedy” and “Jewish humour” are perhaps the best examples of the
received wisdom that humour makes life bearable. Oscar Wilde, who, at
the end of his life, was penniless and living in a cheap and nasty board-
ing house, allegedly said on his deathbed, “My wallpaper and I are
fighting a duel to the death; one or other of us has got to go” (McCarthy,
2006, p. 194). In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, a bunch of crucified crimi-
nals happily sing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”. A famous
example of black comedy is the failed suicide in Beckett’s Waiting for
Godot, in which one of the characters removes his belt to hang himself
and his trousers fall down! And, finally, during the time of tyranny and
poverty in the Russian shtetls, there was a rumour in one village that a
Christian girl had been found murdered nearby. Afraid of a pogrom, the
villagers assembled in the synagogue. Suddenly, the rabbi came running
up, and cried, “Wonderful news! The murdered girl was Jewish!” Mark
1