The Jokes of Sigmund Freud unravels the intimate connections between Sigmund Freud and his Jewish identity. Author Elliott Oring observes that Freud frequently identified with the characters in the jokes he told, and that there was a strong relationship between these jokes and his own psychological and social state. This analysis offers novel insights into the enigmatic character of Freud and a fresh perspective on the nature of the science that he founded.

Observations of the Viennese psychoanalyst on curious plays on words that occur in dreams, and the unconscious sources of pleasure in jokes, wit, and humor.

Why do we laugh? The answer, argued Freud in this groundbreaking study of humor, is that jokes, like dreams, satisfy our unconscious desires. The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious explains how jokes provide immense pleasure by releasing us from our inhibitions and allowing us to express sexual, aggressive, playful, or cynical instincts that would otherwise remain hidden. In elaborating this theory, Freud brings together a rich collection of puns, witticisms, one-liners, and anecdotes, which, as Freud shows, are a method of giving ourselves away. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Over the approximately 100-year course of the development of psychoanalytic theory, from its Freudian foundations to its current fragmented state, psychoanalytic theory has largely abandoned coherence and the inspiration to understand the human mind, argues Rangell Far from suggesting that psychoanalysis be abandoned, he instead traces the evolution of the various strands of psychoanalytic theory so that what is valuable can be extracted and included in a new effort to formulate a unitary theory.

Exploring the structure, motives, and meanings of humor in everyday life In Engaging Humor, Elliott Oring asks essential questions concerning humorous expression in contemporary society, examining how humor works, why it is employed, and what its messages might be. This provocative book is filled with examples of jokes and riddles that reveal humor to be a meaningful--even significant--form of expression. Oring scrutinizes classic Jewish jokes, frontier humor, racist cartoons, blonde jokes, and Internet humor. He provides alternate ways of thinking about humorous expressions by examining their contexts--not just their contents. He also shows how the incongruity and absurdity essential to the production of laughter can serve serious communicative ends. Engaging Humor examines the thoughts that underlie jokes, the question of racist motivation in ethnic humor, and the use of humor as a commentary on social interaction. The book also explores the relationship between humor and sentimentality and the role of humor in forging national identity. Engaging Humor demonstrates that when analyzed contextually and comparatively, humorous expressions emerge as communications that are startling, intriguing, and profound.

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.