ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology for Clinical Settings
This article is part of the Research TopicApplied Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytically Informed ResearchView all 4 articles
The unbearable lightness of laughing A reflexive, thematic analysis of smiles and laugher in five psychotherapy training processes
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- 2Universitetet i Oslo, Oslo, Norway
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Objective: This study explored how smiles and laughter unfolded in five psychotherapy training processes, comprising two psychodynamic, two metacognitive, and one integrative. Methods: Using a multimodal approach, video observations from naturalistic therapy and supervision sessions served as a springboard for Interpersonal Process Recall interviews with therapists, clients, and supervisors. Transcripts from supervision sessions and interviews were analyzed with Reflexive Thematic Analysis. Findings: The analysis yielded four themes: 1. Smiles and laughter sometimes served to strengthen the therapeutic alliance, while at other times they functioned as emotion-regulating strategies or carried profound personal significance; 2. The therapists intuitively tended to downregulate their responses to clients' expressions of laughter, to modulate and contain the clients' underlying emotions; 3. The way therapists handled laughter and smiles in the therapeutic setting seemed to be related to their degree of security and the quality of the therapeutic relationship; and 4. In supervision, smiles and laughter were not explicitly addressed as a distinct theme but occasionally surfaced spontaneously during sessions. Conclusion: By showing how clinical practice unfolds on observable and inferred emotional levels, the study highlights the importance of empirical grounding and the difficulty of verbalizing subtle nonverbal processes.
Keywords: Containment, Nonverbal Communication, Psychoanalytic interpretations, Psychotherapy training, smiles and laughter in psychotherapy, supervision, qualitative analysis
Received: 09 Oct 2025; Accepted: 31 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hillestad Hoff and Strømme. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cecilie Hillestad Hoff, cecilhh@psykologi.uio.no
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