In this piece I will use Abraham Maslow’s theory of personality to demonstrate how his concepts apply to my innate use of humor. I have applied four basic concepts, from Maslow’s theory, to demonstrate this aspect of my personality and how they describe my consistent humorous pattern of outlook to life. Such concepts include: hierarchy of needs, the self, self-acceptance, and psychological health.

Humor to me, as it correlates to Maslow’s theory of personality, serves as a multifaceted, nonlinear therapeutic technique that exists within each dimension of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It bridges the gap between the different levels of individual awareness and facilitates the progression of realization from the lower mind (self) to the higher mind (Real Self) in which a radical depolarization of perception occurs and as a consequence perception of life and reality is recontextualized. Thus, I have found humor assists in the transcendence of the more primitive conditional needs perpetuated by mentalizations, which subserve emotionalities and personalized wants, into the higher self-actualization need.

I have experienced that humor offsets and precludes emotional pain and anxiety with which it transcends the negative by exposing unspoken fallacies that would otherwise be unapproachable by virtue of resonance within the lower dimensional levels of perception (lower needs). Humor exposes the suppressed aspects of human psyche so they can be identified and more easily acknowledged, owned, and thereby transcended by the illusory, transparency of the fallacy.

With proper application, humor unequivocally sets a fundamental stage of contrast between what the mind perceives and the substratum essence of reality. Psychological denial can originate from guilt, and when guilt is alleviated, inner honesty ensues as self-acceptance is established – a product of the self-actualization need.

Humor diminishes the value placed on misperceived fallacies, originating from the lower self, by contrasting psychological road blocks with innate actualizing tendencies by means of placing them into juxtaposition. Accordingly, facilitating realization and supporting an effortless movement through the hierarchy of needs, humor assists in the direction of attention and focus of self-actualizing creativity. As such, the epiphenomenal consequence of humor has helped me transition the ephemerality of peak experiences into a state of interminable compassion as unconditional acceptance and discernment is employed for the self and others.

Humor stems from an innate propensity to be creative, to be confident, and to feel free to express desires beyond society’s constraints by revealing alternative viewpoints and options of expression and is therefore liberating and freeing which has contributed to my psychological health, undoubtedly. Furthermore, Humor coincides with B-love as being nonpossessive, unselfish and based on a growth need of reflection rather than deficiency or worry and guilt. It has helped to retain and rediscover the fresh, innocent and naïve way of looking at life as I once did as a child.

Humor serves as the texture to the painting of life, in which the canvas is reality and the mind is the paintbrush. Like spontaneously buying really comfortable underwear, humor contributes to the happiness and tranquility of life, which is the ultimate, ineffable peak experience.

Posted on November 8, 2006 in Note To Self | Link