The “World Day of Laughter” is celebrated on Sunday. A pleasant occasion for an encounter with Michael Titze, who is exploring this powerful emotion.
If there were instructions on how to laugh, it would go like this: “Widen your nostrils. Narrow your eyes. Pull the corners of your mouth up. Accelerate your breathing rhythm. Pump the air into the lungs in short bursts until the vocal cords vibrate and a staccato neighing or cackling sound arises. Now set the diaphragm vibrating as well. Make sure that it thoroughly kneads the liver, gall bladder, spleen and gastrointestinal area. If you now ensure that the eye muscle causes the brain to release happiness hormones, then it is done: You are happily misted, everything inside you pulls, pulls, pokes and swings, you laugh at the top of your neck, you can’t stop. “
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But of course there are no instructions on how to laugh. It cannot be submitted to the will. “We can only be amazed at what happens inside us when we laugh.” Michael Titze says that. He wrote the list of the “work steps” that the body performs when we laugh. “When we smile, giggle or grin, the will may still have a say,” explains Titze. “If we laugh freely, he’s at a loss.”
Michael Titze is 73 years old. He dedicated 50 of them to laughter. And the humor it evokes. But what does that mean: dedicated. Like laughter that doesn’t ask big questions, but grabs you from behind and pulls you away, the subject has taken hold of Michael Titze, never let go of him.
As a therapist trained as a psychoanalyst, he has explored the healing powers of humor, and as the author of numerous books, he has made his findings available to the international public. He was co-organizer of scientific congresses that gave laughter and humor research new impulses. Thought leaders from California’s Silicon Valley, such as Stanford Professor Paul Watzlawick, who achieved world fame with a “Guide to Unhappiness”, and the founder of laughter research, William Fry, accepted Titze’s invitation and presented their research results. Numerous people from the practice contributed everyday experiences. Clowns performing in hospitals reported the pain-relieving properties of humor, and laughter yoga teachers reported the contagious power of laughter.
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But is this what a laugh researcher’s workplace looks like? Titze’s office on the outskirts of the small town of Tuttlingen in Baden-Württemberg doesn’t even make you smile. An office, a lot of gray, a lot of white, a bottle of mineral water on the desk. The bookshelf is full. What no longer fits vertically is on top of it. The view outside of the overcast sky of the Upper Danube Valley is not exactly amusing either. And Titze himself?
A few out of line hairs suggest that their owner has a sense of weirdness. Titzes sonorous voice signals that he is not an air guy, but has both feet on the ground, keeping an eye on the seriousness of life even when he crosses the border to the world of humor. The most telling, of course, is Michael Titze’s laugh. It is a knowing, mischievous laugh. Nothing human is alien to me, everything is good, it seems to mean. Even the most eccentric patient should feel understood and accepted by this man.
How did he get the idea to seriously look into laughter? Michael Titze didn’t think twice: “The decisive factor was the encounter with schizophrenics.” He met her for the first time in the Reichenau Psychiatric Teaching Hospital, where he was a psychology student in the early 1970s. He will never forget the welcome they give him. “Are you Santa Claus?” Echoes him. “No, he’s not beautiful enough for that,” interjects one patient. “Then the Easter Bunny will definitely send him,” speculates another. Everyone laughs, Titze too. He plays along, admits that the Easter bunny sent him, has fun in the absurd role-play.
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In the Zwiefalten psychiatry, where Titze gained his first professional experience, he undertook further enjoyable excursions into the imaginary world of schizophrenics. The audience joins them: doctors, nurses and nurses. They bend over with laughter. A psychologist, who also watches with amusement, would later become Titze’s wife and have two children with him, a girl and a boy.
When the young psychiatrist not only accepts the absurd, but takes it up, adds humorously, takes the absurdity to extremes, he does so not without therapeutic ulterior motives. “By accepting pathological behavior, approving it, making it my own, I break freezing patterns of behavior,” says Titze to himself. “For the schizophrenic who is generally alienating in his fellow human beings and experiences rejection, there is secretly free space to try out alternative behavior.”
As unusual as that sounds, it’s not entirely new. Alfred Adler, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, had already achieved success with such a paradoxical approach. He recommended that patients suffering from insomnia should stay up late at night and imagine terrible things in bed. However, they did the beneficial opposite. Paul Watzlawick later followed the same therapeutic approach with his “Instructions on Unhappiness”.
Michael Titze can also report successes. One of his patients is regularly ravaged by violent seizures. Friends and relatives are at a loss, watch unconscious. Titze reacts differently: “That’s good,” he exclaims, “tighten up even more, more spit, more foam!” Red with anger, the patient insults him as a bastard. But the tension eases, the cramps stop.
It turns out that the seizures were an expression of unacknowledged anger towards relatives from whom the patient had suffered. She pays them back with seizures, plunging them into sheer despair. When the woman finds other ways to articulate her anger, the convulsions finally stop.
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Titze gradually widened his view, turned to humor outside of the clinic and practice and realized: What applies to the mentally unstable also applies to the mentally stable. They too experience the breakout from reality and logic into the realm of humor as liberating. “If realistic communication derails, ends up in the anarchic, in the absurd, and in the end there is only laughter, then this is pure luck,” is Titze’s conclusion.
And as if so much happiness wasn’t enough, laughter also makes you healthy. Titze lists what beneficial effects it can do in the human body: “Laughter strengthens the immune system, reduces stress hormones, stimulates the fat metabolism, lowers the cholesterol level, and promotes digestion. It revs up the cardiovascular system, strengthens the lungs and gives the brain a real oxygen shower. “
Michael Titze’s childhood was not pure bliss. He was born in Maribor, Slovenia. He was not born with laughter. The father, a Sudeten German factory owner, doesn’t have much sense of humor. The Czech mother alone flashes it every now and then. When the boy was five, the family moved to Germany. For little Michael, who speaks Czech with his parents, it is now time to learn German. A lack of language skills make him a mockery of his classmates. In those years, Titze experienced himself as “different from the others”.
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Later on, it is colleagues and superiors who scoff. “Here comes our laughter therapist,” it sometimes echoes from the mouths of Orthodox Freudians. The fact that he does not offer himself to the patient as an emotionally uninvolved projection surface, but rather makes common with him, provokes him with humor, laughs with him, shakes the foundations of their professional self-image.
But not only in professional circles, also outside of it is offensive. Convinced that laughter is insignificant in a competitive society, Titze’s critics set out a simple equation: “Anyone who attaches importance to laughter is not serious enough.” should switch to mainstream, ”says Titze. Ultimately, he stays on course. To do this, he needs “the courage to be ridiculous”.
But that’s over. Humor has now become firmly established in psychoanalysis and behavioral therapy. The mocking smile of colleagues has turned into an appreciative one. Titze succeeds as an internationally sought-after speaker. And there are certainly no doubts about him in these times of the pandemic. Laughter is sorely missed on all sides. It seems rarer, more precious, more healing than ever. (Axel Veiel) Vitamin D deficiency: Artificial intake can be very damaging to your health.
