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outcolder's review against another edition
2.0
My older son says Freud is someone you have to chase out of the kitchen with a broom. That is true, but Freud is also someone who can admit when he doesn't know something and he is someone who solicits criticism and then responds to it. Some of my problems with this book might be the "standard edition" translation which frankly, sucks. In addition to just inventing new English words, using some obscure Greek term instead of doing the work of translating, translating one-to-one so that vorfreude becomes fore-pleasure, everything seems to be unnecessarily complicated so that readers can pat themselves on the back and tell themselves how smart they are. Maybe I am the dumb one, but it seems to me that nothing in this book is that difficult to understand if you just say it in simple language. A lot of it boils down to "insights" like, we laugh because we feel superior to the person being made fun of. He seems also to be saying that there always must be someone being made fun of, "the third person" he calls it, like the other two people are the joke teller and the joke listener. Things like puns or jokes that don't have a target are of a lesser quality, for the notoriously competitive Freud.
A bigger frustration for me is Freud's classism, racism, and general bourgeois baggage. He frequently asserts that the uneducated do not tell proper jokes, they just tell insults. At one point he is harping on this again and he throws in children and "people of other races" as being too primitive to joke, because, he claims, the uncivilized repress less, so they don't need to release their repression in jokes. What the Freud?!
Nowhere does he look at the punching up or punching down side of jokes. He does not consider really the social context of jokes beyond discussing our sympathy for certain characters in the jokes. And then often, his sympathy seems to be with the wrong people, like when discussing a Mark Twain joke where Freud seems to be on the side of the employer so therefore he doesn't think the joke is funny.
You often hear or read that Freud's models are related to steam engines, and that it's all about pressure and release. Freud talks about release so much in this book... and yeah, obviously, laughing is a release, so he is right to talk about that... but... maybe it's the translation... calling it "discharge"... it started to feel like everything for Freud is basically 'blue balls' which of course, isn't real. What if we never released anything from laughter or any of the other Freudian ways to discharge our emotional investments? I am not convinced that this a blockage and that neurosis is the inevitable outcome. Speaking of investments, Freud talks a lot about economy of movement or economy of words, when talking about jokes, as if our souls are all accountants.
There are some things to enjoy about this book, though. Some of the jokes are good. The Viennese world of that Freud-time comes through in some of his anecdotes, his references to Schiller, Heine, various politicians and nobles, or in one of my favorite bits when he says that when we turn on an electric light we remember what a pain in the ass it was to deal with the gas lights. A hundred years later, we can maybe think that Freud is gaslighting us but we have no idea what the freud a gaslight is.
A bigger frustration for me is Freud's classism, racism, and general bourgeois baggage. He frequently asserts that the uneducated do not tell proper jokes, they just tell insults. At one point he is harping on this again and he throws in children and "people of other races" as being too primitive to joke, because, he claims, the uncivilized repress less, so they don't need to release their repression in jokes. What the Freud?!
Nowhere does he look at the punching up or punching down side of jokes. He does not consider really the social context of jokes beyond discussing our sympathy for certain characters in the jokes. And then often, his sympathy seems to be with the wrong people, like when discussing a Mark Twain joke where Freud seems to be on the side of the employer so therefore he doesn't think the joke is funny.
You often hear or read that Freud's models are related to steam engines, and that it's all about pressure and release. Freud talks about release so much in this book... and yeah, obviously, laughing is a release, so he is right to talk about that... but... maybe it's the translation... calling it "discharge"... it started to feel like everything for Freud is basically 'blue balls' which of course, isn't real. What if we never released anything from laughter or any of the other Freudian ways to discharge our emotional investments? I am not convinced that this a blockage and that neurosis is the inevitable outcome. Speaking of investments, Freud talks a lot about economy of movement or economy of words, when talking about jokes, as if our souls are all accountants.
There are some things to enjoy about this book, though. Some of the jokes are good. The Viennese world of that Freud-time comes through in some of his anecdotes, his references to Schiller, Heine, various politicians and nobles, or in one of my favorite bits when he says that when we turn on an electric light we remember what a pain in the ass it was to deal with the gas lights. A hundred years later, we can maybe think that Freud is gaslighting us but we have no idea what the freud a gaslight is.
theaurochs's review against another edition
4.0
Absolutely fascinating book.
Freud's thought process is intriguing and very well argued- it is an intense deep dive into certain semantics that I never knew I wanted explaining, but I'm now very glad that I took this journey.
What exactly is a joke, and why do we laugh at it? It's surely an age-old question, and here Freud extends his more famous analysis of dreams and the subconscious with the aim to explain jokes in the same terms. His ultimate thesis is that laughter from a joke arises from excess psychical energy (mental effort) released when a 'shortcut' of sorts is found- comparing two otherwise unlike examples. Or, when surplus psychical energy is released by comparison with mental inhibitions that are culturally dependant. Despite the fact that the scientific body at large is no longer in agreement with this interpretation, it still was a powerful step in the understanding of the conscious/unconscious mind at the time. And as mentioned, it is well laid out and enjoyable to read.
The translation (2002 edition- Joyce Crick) must also take great credit in addition to what I imagine is superb original writing; the prose is engaging and manages to convey the subtler ideas with clarity but never strays over into the stuffy, overly-academic tone that a lot of scientific writing finds itself in.
Two concepts really come in to play here. The first is this- when you explain a joke, it stops being funny (a concept which Freud actually adequately explains). And second- when you continue a bit and it stops being funny, but then you can keep it going for long enough that it becomes funny again. The effect is to make a large portion of the book feel quite amusing already, just by the ridiculous extent to which Freud will take a joke and analyse it to oblivion.
The selection of jokes themselves are also quite illuminating- a lot of them are lost to a translation either of language or space, but there are enough that are still genuinely amusing.
A genuinely fascinating book that I'd recommend to pretty much anyone with an interest in knowledge!
Freud's thought process is intriguing and very well argued- it is an intense deep dive into certain semantics that I never knew I wanted explaining, but I'm now very glad that I took this journey.
What exactly is a joke, and why do we laugh at it? It's surely an age-old question, and here Freud extends his more famous analysis of dreams and the subconscious with the aim to explain jokes in the same terms. His ultimate thesis is that laughter from a joke arises from excess psychical energy (mental effort) released when a 'shortcut' of sorts is found- comparing two otherwise unlike examples. Or, when surplus psychical energy is released by comparison with mental inhibitions that are culturally dependant. Despite the fact that the scientific body at large is no longer in agreement with this interpretation, it still was a powerful step in the understanding of the conscious/unconscious mind at the time. And as mentioned, it is well laid out and enjoyable to read.
The translation (2002 edition- Joyce Crick) must also take great credit in addition to what I imagine is superb original writing; the prose is engaging and manages to convey the subtler ideas with clarity but never strays over into the stuffy, overly-academic tone that a lot of scientific writing finds itself in.
Two concepts really come in to play here. The first is this- when you explain a joke, it stops being funny (a concept which Freud actually adequately explains). And second- when you continue a bit and it stops being funny, but then you can keep it going for long enough that it becomes funny again. The effect is to make a large portion of the book feel quite amusing already, just by the ridiculous extent to which Freud will take a joke and analyse it to oblivion.
The selection of jokes themselves are also quite illuminating- a lot of them are lost to a translation either of language or space, but there are enough that are still genuinely amusing.
A genuinely fascinating book that I'd recommend to pretty much anyone with an interest in knowledge!
jemjemv's review against another edition
informative
2.5
2.5/3 This was both interesting and boring/over explained at the same time, but …it’s Freud.
I did buy this at the Freud Museum in Austria, so it has some sentimental value for me.
I did buy this at the Freud Museum in Austria, so it has some sentimental value for me.
jeremychiasson's review against another edition
3.0
Nothing is worse than having someone explain a joke to you.
Now imagine having arcane jokes explained to you by an Austrian Psychoanalyst who grew up in the Victorian era for 300 pages or so.
Somehow it burrows its way so far into unbearable tedium, that it digs right through to the other side into being funny.
Still, it's a little painful to read sometimes.
Now imagine having arcane jokes explained to you by an Austrian Psychoanalyst who grew up in the Victorian era for 300 pages or so.
Somehow it burrows its way so far into unbearable tedium, that it digs right through to the other side into being funny.
Still, it's a little painful to read sometimes.
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