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Vol. 44 No. 1 (2024)
Revista Portuguesa de Psicanálise

Auditório

La Complexite du Rire Humain: Une Approche Pluridisciplinaire

https://doi.org/10.51356/rpp.441a6

Published 2024-06-30

  • Éric Smadja

Éric Smadja
Société psychanalytique de Paris

Abstract

The Complexity of Human Laughter: A Multidisciplinary Approach

It is often said that laughter is, on the one hand, exclusive to man and, on the other, that it expresses joy and pleasure; finally, that it is an automatic and reflex behaviour. This all reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of its complexity, which can only be explored following a multi- and interdisciplinary approach, including biological, psychological and historical-sociocultural dimensions.

Thus, with ethology, we approach the phenomenology of laughter, its ontogenesis and phylogenesis, factors of its historicity. Following this, with psychology, psychoanalysis and neurology in particular, we explore the external and internal causalities that contribute to the triggering and production of laughter in its complexity. Three aspects are distinguished: the psychological, with its unconscious cognitive and psycho-affective components, the cerebral and its locomotor realisation.

Finally, a socio-anthropological approach to laughter is considered. Based on historical and ethnographic facts, an original representation of the relationship between laughter and the laughable is developed, forming a "laughable-laughable" communication system. Laughter would then occupy an intermediate position between this system of risible communication and that of emotional, individual and social expressions. This system includes, in particular, certain psychological and social functions.

Keywords

laughter, man, complexity, multidisciplinary

PDF (Français)

Author Biography

Éric Smadja

Psiquiatra, Psicanalista (adultos e casais), Membro da Sociedade Psicanalítica de Paris (SPP) e da Associação Psicanalítica Internacional (IPA), Antropólogo e Membro Associado da Associação Americana de Antropologia.

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