ABSTRACT
Black humor, gallows humor, is humor that makes light of death and terrifying situations, and is a coping mechanism for emotional laborers. The PPCT environment uses play and humor to let children be children—to blur the line between personal and professional, between parent and child, and between hospital and home. Hospital play emphasizes the “children” part—over the “hospital” part—of a children’s hospital, provides emotional healing when physical healing is not possible, and can rekindle spent souls in a sudden explosion of devilish humor.
