The psychology of humour shows that amusement often arises from a non-threatening incongruity: something jars, surprises, and our brain smiles rather than tightening up.

In systemic terms, this twist of the frame is precious: it briefly interrupts the habitual logic of exchanges — homeostasis — and creates an opening towards other ways of seeing and acting. Laughter is not an escape; it can be a corrective micro-experience: we feel that things could be otherwise.

On the relational side, humour humanises the therapeutic encounter. A shared smile can warm the alliance, lower defences, and re-examine a rigid belief without confrontation. On the process side, it regulates arousal: it deflates anxiety just enough for thinking to become flexible again.

Humour is neither neutral nor universal: it must always be calibrated to the person, the moment and the cultural context. Four essential markers.

Disarming rigidity. In a system bogged down in its routines, a touch of the absurd acts like a grain of sand in the gears. Humour breaks the repetition and introduces play — in both the mechanical and the relational sense.

Reframing without wounding. Reframing means changing the meaning without changing the facts. In its humorous version, a striking image is sometimes enough. To an over-protective father: “At this rate, when he is twenty-five you will still be holding his hand to cross the road…” The image raises a smile, prompts an insight, and begins the son’s de-infantilisation.

Encouraging protective self-deprecation. In the line of Albert Ellis and Viktor Frankl, humour deflates grandiose self-criticism. Turning one’s thoughts into breaking news — “No recruiter answered within the hour, irrefutable proof of my cosmic inadequacy” — reveals their absurdity. Laughter replaces shame, and the rigidity of the belief gives way to a new suppleness.

No defensive humour from the therapist to avoid a difficult emotion. If you feel the urge to joke in order to relieve yourself, breathe, stay.

No cynicism or mockery, except within an explicit, highly calibrated provocative frame of the Farrelly type — and even then, only for certain profiles.

No humour about what is sacred to the client: the body, a recent bereavement, beliefs, humiliations lived through.

Continuous feedback: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how much did that wink help you?” Co-piloting remains the rule.

The best compass remains coherence: do not borrow a humour that is not your own. Many “serious” clinicians use a touch of humour with great finesse, and that is perfect.

The point is not to be funny, but to offer a relational experience in which the problem can be looked at obliquely, without shame, with dignity. Humour does not erase gravity; it widens the space of gravity so that some air can get in.