[Humor, creativity and psychotherapy]

Humor must be clearly distinguished from joke and comic. It presents the characteristics described by Freud for the creative processes in general and has an effect to provoke a removal of the sexual and aggressive inhibitions on a intrapsychical level, thus allowing to the individual to fight against the social constraints. The author defends the idea that humor can usefully be employed in the outline of the corrective emotional experience in the psychotherapeutically relation: it assures not only a removal of inhibitions, but it also protects the individual against the anxiogenic feelings and gives him the possibility to assert himself narcissistally towards the outside world.