Situation Comedy, Character, and Psychoanalysis puts the sitcom character on the analyst's couch and closely examines the characters of Basil Fawlty, Lucy Ricardo and Kim from Australia's Kath & Kim, in order to reveal the essential elements that must exist in a sitcom before even the first joke is written. Original in its approach, D.T. Klika uncovers major findings about the sitcom as well as human behavior and relationships that we find 'arresting' and even “familial”. By offering a new way of reading the sitcom using psychoanalytic theory, this book can be used as a basis for engaging in critical discourses as well as textual analysis of programs. Psychoanalytic theory enables a reading of character motivations and relationships, in turn elucidating the power struggle that exists between characters in this form of comedy. Situation Comedy, Character, and Psychoanalysis shines a light on what is at play in the sitcom that makes us laugh, and why we love the characters we do, only to discover that this form of comedy is more complex than we first thought.

This book offers the first international look at how script development is theorised and practiced. Drawing on interviews, case studies, discourse analysis, creative practices and industry experiences, it brings together scholars and practitioners from around the world to offer critical insights into this core, but often hidden, aspect of screenwriting and screen production. Chapters speculate and reflect upon how creative, commercial and social practices – in which ideas, emotions, people and personalities combine, cohere and clash – are shaped by the practicalities, policies and rapid movements of the screen industry. Comprising two parts, the book first looks ‘into’ script development from a theoretical perspective, and second looks ‘out from’ the practice to form practitioner-led perspectives of script development. With a rising interest in screenwriting and production studies, and an increased appetite for practice-based research, the book offers a timely mapping of the terrain of script development, providing rich foundations for both study and practice.

This book has a question mark in its title because it aims to invite inquiry. The possibility of integrating psychoanalytic and behavior therapies has been controversial since it was first proposed about 50 years ago, and this has elicited a wide range of reactions from both psychologists and psy chiatrists. It was with the hope of fostering constructive interchange that this book was conceived. We wanted to spark further thinking about the question in the title in a way that could lead either to conceptual and clinical progress toward an integrated approach or to a clearer sense of the obstacles involved. In either case, we hoped that it would present a healthy challenge to current forms of psychoanalytic and behavior therapies. The present volume was stimulated by the appearance in 1977 of Paul Wachtel's book Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy: Toward an Integration. Al though many reviewers did not necessarily agree with Wachtel's proposals for integration, they (and we) were highly laudatory of his attempt. After reading the book, Hal Arkowitz organized a symposium on integration that took place in Chicago at the November 1978 meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy. The symposium included Cyril Franks, Merton Gill, Hans Strupp, Paul Wachtel, and Michael Merbaum as moderator. Arkowitz subsequently proposed to edit a book on integra tion and invited Messer to be coeditor.

Cutting-edge philosophers, psychoanalysts, literary theorists, and scholars use Freud and Lacan to shed light on laughter, humor, and the comic. Bringing together clinic, theory, and scholarship this compilation of essays offers an original mix with powerful interpretive implications.

This is a fascinating and beautifully written book on what philosophy can tell us about humour and about what it is to be human. It will fascinate and intrigue anyone with a sense of humour.

Contemporary theory and practice of psychoanalysis.