Throughout the journey of Humor of Transference: To Be Read on the Couch (Humor de transferencia: Para leer en el diván),
Robert Tribastone weaves a subtle irony about the vicissitudes of psychoanalytic treatments, psychoanalysts and the patients. He capably uses an acidic, mordacious, ironic language. He alternates between subtlety and ruthless commentaries. He plays with misunderstandings generated with words, to find, alternatively, the comedian, the laughter or humor. Mr. Tribastone warns from the beginning that in his book one would not find clinical cases or extensive theoretical developments. Nevertheless, through humor and plays on words, his experience in the doctor´s office is informative. One imagines that near the writer´s hand is an ear well-trained in psychoanalysis, a relic of his dedication to helping the patients to do something different with their symptoms. The writer warns in the prologue that for the richness and expansiveness of meanings, the ambiguity and the
misunderstanding that they generate, with homophonies, the misunderstanding and multiplicity of language; there will be those who read sarcasm and wit in a saying. With the composition of the text, the
psychoanalyst obtains much more that a smile; he manages to use humor to demonstrate the importance of working on significance, of playing with language to produce new meaning. The book is very entertaining to read among analysts or friends in psychoanalytic treatment. It appeals to an intelligent humor, sometimes subtle, other times not. Narrated histories, in addition to being good Literature, break preconceptions and force the reader, psychoanalyst or patient of psychoanalysis, to partake in the healthy exercise of laughing at oneself. This book by Tribastone is a very interesting find indeed.