Humour: some theoretical and clinical remarks

Abstract

The model used by Freud to explain the secret of laughter in response to wit is one of energy release. And yet, although his starting point was a reductionistic interpretation dominated by the concepts of censure and the bypassing of censure through unconscious desire and the need for release of accumulated tension in the organism, Freud was able to go beyond the limits imposed by his own definition in his analysis of his carefully collected Jewish jokes and so provide us with an analytical model valid for both literature and art. In the wake of Freud‟s writings and of research carried out by Kris and Gombrich, the author sets out to demonstrate how there is a third form of logic involved in wit and humour, in addition to the primary and secondary process, which relates them to literature and art.