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So Dance, Play, Laugh
(Jung) Once he told me that he made it a great point to see if his patients had a sense of humor. People who have no sense of humor are very difficult to treat, and if they are psychotic they are practically incurable. On the other hand, even severely psychotic people sometimes have a sense of humor. Of those, Jung would say, “Oh, take them, they have such a sense of humor. You might not cure them, but you can keep them afloat.
Once I took such a case, and whenever she showed signs of going off into a psychotic episode, I let myself sink back in the unconscious and it would give me the idea of some obscene joke. It had to be terribly vulgar, but when I merrily told it she would always laugh and become normal again…. I could bring her back from the underworld in that way; it was absolutely saving. I know Barbara Hannah once didn’t want to take on a crazy old schizophrenic, but Jung said, “Oh, for God’s sake, take her! She’s so funny. That is her redeeming quality.”
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We are alive when we feel alive, and what makes us feel alive is the contact with that flow of the unconscious psyche. That’s why dreams are so important. You can say that each ladle full of the water of life is a dream. That’s what a dream is. Every night, we get, so to speak, a sip of the water of life, and, if we understand the dream, we are vivified. We feel in contact with our psychic…
