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Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious

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Found Freud in your search? You are no amateur or you are a real explorer of unkown lands. Even a beginner with Freud can enjoy this brilliant analysis of the fun behind wit and jokes. Don't think knowing why things are funny will reduce your pleasure in them....far from it, you will understand yourself and others better, you will find added sparkle in wit and discover the land mines hidden in the tall grass of laughter. Though not for the linguistically challenged, Freud richly rewards the determined reader. Take him on

This 1905 book about the psychological origins of humor is a welcome change from the often ponderous theoretical musings of Freud. Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"Strictly speaking, we do not know what we are laughing about. In all obscene jokes we succumb to striking mistakes of judgment about the 'goodness' of the joke as far as it depends upon formal conditions; the technique of these jokes is often very poor while their laughing effect is enormous."
(On "Jewish jokes which originate with Jews"): "I do not know whether one oftens finds a people that makes merry so unreservedly over its own shortcomings."
"Where the argument seeks to draw the hearer's reason to its side, wit strives to push aside this reason. There is no doubt that wit has chosen the way which is psychologically more efficacious."
"We know, too, in the case of wit that it is not a strange person's, but one's own mental processes that contain the sources for the production of pleasure."
"Humor can now be conceived as the loftiest of these defense functions. It disdains to withdraw from conscious attention ideas which are connected with the painful affect, as repression does, and it, thus, overcomes the defense automatism."