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(2014) Humor, laughter and human flourishing, Dordrecht, Springer.
This chapter examines Freud's analysis of dreams and humor in a number of texts including The Interpretation of Dreams, Jokes, and their Relation to the Unconscious, his essay on "Humor" as well as some of the works of his critics. In particular, I attempt to investigate the association that Freud identified between dreams and humor from a phenomenological rather than a psychoanalytic one. I examine the same similarities Freud identified between dreams and humor in order to determine if these parallels correspond to how we actually experience them. After analyzing the common elements that dreams and humor share, the next part discusses some important differences between them. In the final part of this chapter, I highlight the significance of the similarities in how we experience dreams and humor for human flourishing. I argue that one important aspect of dreams and humor is that they both represent healthy, albeit different, ways of responding to the absurd nature of our existence.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-00834-9_4
Full citation:
Gordon, M. (2014). Freud, dreams, and humor: a phenomenological perspective, in Humor, laughter and human flourishing, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 43-56.
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