On humour and pathology: The role of paradox and absurdity for ideological survival

Anthropologically informed approaches to mental health have argued for the importance of examining cultural specificity of mental distress and coping patterns. In an increasingly globalised world, a call has been made within international mental health agendas to pay attention to the particular needs and resources of sub-dominant populations. This paper deals with results from a study carried out with a Mexican community that has engendered a publicly contradictory imagery: a community considered marginal, deviant and multi-pathological, and yet outwittingly resilient and innovative. The goal was to gain an understanding of local patterns of distress and coping--and their encompassing meanings--to guide the orientation of therapeutic interventions. In a first stage, the study involved brief, intensive ethnographic work. This included participant observation, document analysis, application of both structured and semi-structured questionnaires, and population-based open-ended interviews. Information about community life, social organisation, value-systems and styles of interaction was collected. In a second phase, analysis of the collected information was followed by the implementation and assessment of community-based family therapy sessions. This report will deal with results from our ethnographic work. Our findings argue that humour-based interactions might serve for psychological and ideological survival in the face of psychosocial stigmatisation. Irony, absurdity and paradox, might be used to contest and transcend, both in thought and in action, the logic of dominant and dichotomous systems of thought where the attributes of pathology are embedded.