It is not enough to have them laugh: Hostility, anger, and humor-coping in schizophrenic patients

Based upon Freud's understanding of humor as a coping mechanism, and findings relating the use of humor to stress buffering, we hypothesised that schizophrenic individuals who have the ability to use “mature” defense mechanisms such as humor in coping with stress would show less hostility, aggression and anger. The Coping Humor Scale (CHS), which measures the amount of humor one uses when under stress, was correlated with different measures of hostility and anger. The results, as well as a review of the literature suggest that there is no clear one-to-one relationship between the use of humor as a coping mechanism and the use of aggression, hostility and anger. We assume that this is due to several reasons. First, humor may be used immaturely; second, even if an individual has the capacity to use it maturely it does not mean that aggressive attitudes do not remain somehow “functional” especially in closed institutions, and particularly for schizophrenic patients.