Psychotherapy and Culture: Humor, Dreams and Migration
How humor, dreams, and the migratory experiences shape identity, resilience, and psychological wellbeing.
HUMOR AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING
I know well the power of humor for psychological well-being. Humor lightens heavy atmospheres—hospital clowns help reduce suffering, and practices such as Laughter Yoga foster collective release. It is something that unites us as human beings: it helps us manage negative emotions and shame, offering a shift in perspective, even if only for a moment. As Viktor Frankl reminded us in Man’s Search for Meaning, even in a concentration camp, humor helped him and his companions resist annihilation. At its best, humor is medicine for the mind.
This does not mean being superficial or laughing at the misfortune of others. It does not mean ignoring moral calls to action or trivializing tragedy. Rather, it means cultivating balance—between the weight of living and the lightness we are capable of creating and sharing.
HUMOR, SHAME, AND SURVIVAL IN MIGRANT EXPERIENCE
For people navigating displacement, cultural dislocation, or marginalization, humor often functions as a way to metabolize vulnerability. It allows painful experiences to be reshaped into something shareable, bearable, and meaningful, rather than internalized as silence or shame.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL ROOTS OF MY WORK ON HUMOR
I have been a scholar of humor since the beginning of my studies. As a student in Italy, I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Tabarin (summa cum laude, 1993), a seventeenth-century charlatan who, together with his partner Mondor, staged the so-called Questions: short sketches in which the world was turned upside down and scatology, vulgarity, and misogyny reigned.
Later, as an anthropologist at Columbia University, I studied humor in the fish market of Cagliari, Sardinia, during a period of radical transformation under the pressures of globalization. In that almost entirely male community, humor served a psychological and social function: it helped modulate stress, maintain or destabilize hierarchies, grease business relationships, persuade, restore dignity, and make what was “out of place”—illegal or inappropriate—temporarily acceptable. As many scholars have described it, humor was both a “weapon of the weak” and a “weapon of the soul.”
WHEN HUMOR HEALS — AND WHEN IT HARMS
Of course, humor can also become toxic—annihilating when it turns into ridicule, microaggressions, or deliberate attempts to humiliate or destroy another person. This is never healthy. But in many other cases, humor is a powerful force that deserves to be cultivated, to help sustain ourselves and others under the weight of life.
HUMOR AS A CLINICAL AND HUMAN RESOURCE
In my philosophy of therapy, humor stands alongside psychoanalysis, cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness, and coaching. It is not an escape from the tragedy of being alive, but a companion that makes that weight more bearable.
A strong sense of humor can help people remain standing in periods of profound adversity. I sincerely believe it can even contribute, in its own way, to saving the world. Humor offers an alternative in moments of crisis: instead of reacting with violence or escalation, we can rise above, recognize what we share, and accept the vulnerabilities and imperfections we all carry.
This does not mean accepting humiliation or ignoring injustice. It means creating space—even for a moment, the length of a laugh or a breath—to respond with greater awareness and humanity.
Migration is not a single event, but an ongoing psychological process that shapes identity, relationships, and emotional resilience.
Leide Porcu PhD LP
Immigrants sustain societies in visible and invisible ways, often carrying responsibility, resilience, and care far beyond what is acknowledged.
Let us find strength in our communities and histories, and continue to cultivate growth and possibility.
Leide Porcu PhD LP
THE CLINICAL ROLE OF HUMOR IN THERAPY
As a therapist, I have seen how a well-timed moment of humor can dissolve shame, reduce fear, and open the door to new perspectives. Shared laughter strengthens the therapeutic alliance, reminding both patient and therapist of their common humanity. For many immigrants, humor also becomes a tool of survival—transforming awkwardness, misunderstandings, or exclusion into stories that heal rather than wound.
Humor sustains us in the most difficult moments: it reminds us that we share vulnerability and imperfection, and it offers breath instead of conflict. Sometimes a single laugh is enough to open space for a new, more human response.
Leide Porcu, PhD, LP
Insomnia is not only a personal problem: it reduces quality of life and weighs on society as a whole, costing billions in lost productivity.
Leide Porcu, PhD, LP
DREAMS AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
Dream Work in Psychoanalytic and Intercultural Therapy
Dreams are a privileged pathway to self-understanding. There are no universal dream dictionaries: each dream is unique and must be understood within the dreamer’s personal history, emotional life, and cultural context. In some traditions, dreams are seen as messages from ancestors or the divine; in others, as reflections of daily life or expressions of unconscious psychological material.
In my clinical work, I approach dreams as communications from parts of ourselves that are less accessible in waking life. Dreams help process experience, link memories, and give form to emotional truths that may be difficult to recognize consciously. They offer a space where conflict, fear, desire, and loss can be expressed safely and symbolically.
I do not treat dreams as riddles to be solved or clever word games. I explore them collaboratively with patients, allowing meaning to emerge through dialogue and reflection. Together, we may:
· explore dream imagery through free associations
· connect dreams to personal history and recent life events
· identify metaphors that reflect inner conflicts or relational dynamics
· consider each figure or image as part of the self, or as emerging within the therapeutic relationship
At times, dream work can also include extending the dream: imagining an alternative ending to a recurring or distressing dream. This can reduce fear, restore a sense of agency, and open new emotional possibilities.
From Freud—who famously described dreams as “the royal road to the unconscious”—to contemporary psychoanalytic and relational perspectives, dreams remain a powerful clinical tool. They allow us to think differently, to experiment with new meanings in a protected space, and to loosen the grip of automatic patterns that shape daily life.
My work with dreams is informed by many years of clinical practice, psychoanalytic training, and anthropological research. I also explore dream work in my book, Neither Here Nor There, where dreams are understood as a bridge between inner life, migration, memory, and identity.
If you wish to explore your dreams as part of psychotherapy, you are welcome to book a session for dream work and analysis in New York City, New Jersey, Vermont, or online.
MIGRATION, IDENTITY, AND INTERCULTURAL PSYCHOTHERAPY IN NEW YORK
My intercultural psychotherapy practice in New York serves individuals and families navigating migration, relocation, and life between cultures. I work with immigrants, expats, international students, temporary workers, professionals, diplomats, and globally mobile families facing complex personal, relational, and professional transitions.
I am deeply familiar with the challenges of international and diplomatic careers, where frequent moves bring instability, repeated separations, and the need for constant adaptation. I also support executives and high-achieving professionals who, despite outward success, experience loneliness, pressure, cultural dislocation, or a lack of rootedness.
Alongside these experiences, I work with people who were forced to migrate under difficult circumstances, often facing economic precarity, legal uncertainty, and cultural loss. I am especially attentive to the emotional burden carried by children of immigrants, who often hold both their parents’ hopes for success and the unspoken trauma of migration. I see international and immigrant students who struggle to feel they belong, and who have not yet had the emotional or institutional support needed to express their full potential.
Through intercultural psychotherapy, I help individuals develop resilience, integrate multiple identities, and build a sense of belonging without losing the roots that shaped them. Every migration story is different. Some people arrive with many resources; others are more vulnerable. For this reason, I dedicate part of my practice to maintaining access to care for those with fewer economic means.
My approach integrates psychoanalysis, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness, coaching, and an anthropological perspective. This allows me to offer both depth and practicality—supporting patients in working through anxiety, depression, migratory grief, intergenerational conflict, identity tension, and challenges of cultural adaptation.
These themes are explored more fully in my book Neither Here Nor There, where migration is understood not as a single event, but as an ongoing psychological process shaping identity, relationships, and emotional resilience.
My goal is to create a welcoming and secure space where immigrants, second-generation individuals, expats, diplomats, and globally mobile professionals can cultivate balance, resilience, and belonging—transforming the challenges of migration into opportunities for growth and psychological integration.
I also work with partners who accompany someone relocating for work, as well as with Italian families and family businesses living between cultures. In these cases, I may work not only with individuals, but with couples or family systems, fostering dialogue, mutual understanding, and cohesion across generations and cultural contexts.
Foto Credits ID 18060697 © Sean Pavone