PECULIARITIES OF USING OF HUMOR IN CONSULTING

Abstract

The training of practical psychologists for advisory activity has certain specificity. The course of psychological counseling contains practical orientation, which is based on fundamental theoretical training. The analysis of counseling books allows claim that most of them consist of theoretical definitions, methodological bases of counseling, analysis of the counselor's and client's personality, indicators of qualitative psychological contact and effective work interaction. In addition, they reveal the philosophy and counseling process, the main technologies of the psychologist's work; the specifics of the work of the psychologist with the various cases that a specialist may encounter is provides. However, such an important phenomenon of the process of interpersonal interaction as humor, remains outside the area of attention of specialists. Although the topic of humor sometimes appears in the academic literature, but usually these books are devoted to certain branches of psychological knowledge: art-therapy, psychology of humor, etc.
Therefore, the aim of the article is a comprehensive analysis of humor as a psychological phenomenon, peculiarities of its use in the work of a consultant-psychologist.
There are several aspects in the sense of the topic of humor for a counselor-psychologist. First of all, it is an awareness of the features of their own sense of humor, its typical manifestations in the process of communicating with different categories of people (close people, meaningful people, colleagues, clients, etc.), as well as the skill to analyze and regulate their own manifestations of comic. Secondly, this is an understanding of the possibilities of using of humor in the consultation process: implicit (hidden) diagnosis of the client's condition, its mechanisms of protection or coping-strategies, establishing of relationships and psychological contact in the process of consultation. The third aspect is the use of humor as a technology aimed to help different types of clients.
Consequently, meaningful studies of the theoretical aspects of humor create a solid basis for empirical study. Prospects for further research may lie in the using of humor in psychological rehabilitation.