Humor in Freud

In Freud's view, jokes (the verbal and interpersonal form of humor) happened when the conscious allowed the expression of thoughts that society usually suppressed or forbade. Freud also regarded jokes as comparable to dreams, insofar as he deemed both processes to involve a release of desires and impulses that are typically repressed by the conscience. The superego allowed the ego to generate humor. ==The different types of humor==

If jokes let out forbidden thoughts and feelings that the conscious mind usually suppresses in deference to society, there was an interaction between unconscious drives and conscious thoughts. Mimesis, on the other hand, was a process involving two different representations of the body in our mind. An upset American says at Sunday School: "Roosevelt is my Shepherd; I am in want. He makes me to lie down on park benches; he leads me in the paths of destruction for His party's sake". == In advertising ==

An analysis of content from business-to-business advertising magazines in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany found a high (23 percent) overall usage of humor. The highest percentage was found in the British sample at 26 percent. Of the types of humor found by McCullough and Taylor, three categories correspond with Freud's grouping of tendentious (aggression and sexual) and non-tendentious (nonsense) wit. 20 percent of the humor are accounted for as “aggression” and “sexual.” “Nonsense” is listed at 18 percent. ==Criticism==

It has been claimed that Freud's division is artificial and not very clear. According to Altman (2006), these divisions are more semantic than functional. Hence, all three types of humor may be the result of the dynamic of the conscious and unconscious. For example, hate and anger can be hidden by a false sense of love and compassion, which could be the opposite of what was meant, and which could formulate a joke. ==References==