Emotional Control : Anderson Cooper Gets the Giggles

If you haven't seen Anderson Cooper catch a case of the giggles on live TV, you can still watch it on YouTube.  I missed the first showing, but saw Mr. Cooper replay it on his own Ridiculist List.  But what's this doing on Shrink Rap?

I watched the re-run, and I found myself laughing out loud.  Only, it wasn't a good, happy, hearty laugh, it was an embarrassed and uncomfortable laugh, and I realized I'd taken on the feelings of the newsman.  If I were a psychiatrist (oops, I am, even in August), I might say that Anderson Cooper successfully projected his feelings on to me, or that I empathized with him, assuming he also felt embarrassed.  A friend mentioned he loved it, and but he didn't not feel such discomfort.  Mr. Cooper seemed to enjoy replaying it, laughing at himself laughing, and said he was pleased if he made anyone smile.  Me?...I suppose I'll recover.  

Enjoy the video and do let us know: How did that make you feel?

Three Shrink Rappers Meditating on a Mountain Top....

On my post on meditation, Guzman from Montevideo, Uruguay left us a joke. I mentioned in that post that my mother took me to learn Transcendental Meditation when I was 10. Odd coincidence, but my mother also worked at the US embassy in Montevideo, long ago. Did you know her Guzman? It was many decades ago.

So I took Guzman's joke and I modified it to suit us three Shrink Rappers because it kind of suited our personalities:
Guzmán. said...

Jiddu Krishnamurti telling a joke...

“There are three shrink rapping monks, who had been sitting in deep meditation for many years amidst the Himalayan snow peaks, never speaking a word, in utter silence. One morning, Roy one of the three suddenly speaks up and says, ‘What a lovely morning this is.’ And he falls silent again. Five years of silence pass, when all at once a bird flies over and pulls the duct tape off monk Dinah's mouth and she speaks up and says, ‘But we could do with some rain.’ There is silence among them for another five years, when suddenly ClinkShrink, the third monk says, ‘Why can’t you two stop chattering?”


http://www.katinkahesselink.net/kr/jokes.html
http://seaunaluzparaustedmismo.blogspot.com/

My Three Shrinks Podcast 14: No April Fool

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Hard to believe we went so long without a podcast. Sorry about that, folks, but life got too hectic for a spell. We didn't do anything special for April Fools Day (except some funny YouTube links), but we still think you'll like today's podcast.

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April 1, 2007:


Topics include:

• Q&A: Midwife with a Knife, an OB/GYN, asks us about whether pedophilia is a disease or something else, and what we think about civil (as opposed to criminal) commitment for it. Clink uses one of her 50-cent words on us (ephebophilia, a term that Clink says was coined by John Money in his book, Love Maps). See also The Last Psychiatrist's posts on this here and here.
  
• NYT article: "The Brain on the Stand", by Jeffrey Rosen. Clink talks about this article about brain diseases being put on trial to explain bad behavior.
• Q&A: Dr Anonymous wants us to say more about our recent posts (here and here) on humor and medicine. This whole discussion (and the numerous comments on the blog) was started by Roy's lyrics to "Walk Like a Psychiatrist."
  

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Find show notes with links at: http://mythreeshrinks.com. This podcast is available on iTunes (feel free to post a review) or as an RSS feed. You can also listen to or download the .mp3 or the MPEG-4 file from mythreeshrinks.com.

Thank you for listening.

I Guess You Had To Be There

Every psychiatrist knows the DSM criteria for major depression: low mood, decreased self-attitude, changes in sleep, appetite, concentration, memory or sex drive, excessive or inappropriate guilt (and how do you judge that in a correctional facility?), anhedonia and suicidal ideation.

I would like to propose one small additional criteria:

Humor latency. Yes, a delayed or absent response to humor. Particularly my humor. Some people would claim that loss of humor falls under the anhedonia category, but I disagree. Anhedonia could mean almost anything: inability to enjoy knitting, exercise (but then almost everyone would meet criteria), coffee (never!) or Japanese existentialist literature. Humor is universal. Granted, some research suggests there may be gender differences in humor. Other research done on twins suggest that environmental factors play a role. (Where can I get in on a research gig that involves showing Far Side cartoons to twins?)

I'll grant the fact that men and women may appreciate different forms of humor. A male colleague of mine used to be prone to practical jokes---of the 'hide the rubber cockroach in the patient charts' kind of humor---and he referred to April Fool's Day as "Amateur Day". He had a problem with my puns. Or rather, he suffered from "humor latency". This is how he explained it: "I used to think I was just too stupid and didn't get your humor. But then I realized I did."

Now I know he was just meeting criteria.