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"Inner-directed mockery, Jewish self-satire, and self-criticism are found in the Pentateuch itself, as when the Children of Israel look up at Moses just before the parting of the Red Sea and say, "Are there no graves in Egypt, that you have taken us to die in the desert?" (Ex. 14:11, cited by Kirschenblatt-Gimblett and Wex).
Laughter becomes a healing salve, which is uniquely human. Freudian views of Jewish humor are among the richest and most accurate interpretations of the phenomenon of masochism because Freud was unafraid to explore the darkness of the human experience. Jewish humor is "dipped in tragedy," ("Laugh and the World Laughs With You" 2011). As Ben-Amos states, "The current conception of Jewish humor originated, as many modern ideas have, with Sigmund Freud," (112). American Jewish humor begins with the premise that a mortal human being "has the moral and intellectual courage to recognize and then ridicule his own weaknesses," and therefore "sees no reason to spare the sensibilities of his adversaries for their own deficiencies," ("Laugh and the World Laughs With You"). Freud understood that when anger and aggression cannot be psychically metabolized, they must be transmuted or projected in some way. Neurosis is one of the potential outlets for suppressed emotion, and humor serves a similar function. Suppression, repression, projection, and sublimation are all Freudian concepts that can be used to describe what is uniquely Jewish humor.
The Freudian view of Jewish humor is absolutely applicable to Jewish humor in
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Works Cited
Abrami, Leo M. "Psychoanalyzing Jewish Humor." My Jewish Learning. Retrieved online: http://mobile.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Humor/What_is_Jewish_Humor/Defining_Jewish_Humor/Psychoanalyzing_Humor.shtml
Ben-Amos, Dan. "The "myth' of Jewish humor." Western Folklore 32(2), April 1973.
Kirschenblatt-Gimlett & Wex.
"Laugh and the World Laughs With You," (2011). Living a Jewish Life. Retrieved online: http://www.mazorguide.com/Culture/Humor/background-2.htm
Ziv, Avner. Jewish Humor. Transaction. 1986.
Works Cited
Abrami, Leo M. "Psychoanalyzing Jewish Humor." My Jewish Learning. Retrieved online: http://mobile.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Humor/What_is_Jewish_Humor/Defining_Jewish_Humor/Psychoanalyzing_Humor.shtml
Ben-Amos, Dan. "The "myth' of Jewish humor." Western Folklore 32(2), April 1973.
Kirschenblatt-Gimlett & Wex.
"Laugh and the World Laughs With You," (2011). Living a Jewish Life. Retrieved online: http://www.mazorguide.com/Culture/Humor/background-2.htm
Freud Civilization and Its Discontents Humankind strives for happiness, but according to Sigmund Freud, the creation of civilization as a means to further this goal has instead generated unhappiness. In his book Civilization and its Discontents, Freud asserts the happiness of the individual is often sublimated to the need for civilization to establish law and order. People have an instinctual desire for absolute freedom which includes a need to be sexually
Sigmund Freud I have chosen to write my I-search paper about Sigmund Freud, known today as the father of psychoanalysis. He has impacted our society a great deal and this is obvious when you simply open up a psychology textbook. This semester I am taking a psychology course and we talk about him a lot. I have learned, not only through my psychology course, but also through my dad who majored
And moreover, the virtues that had been "automatically" accorded to Freud over the years -- "clinical acumen, wisdom in human affairs, dedication to his patients and to the truth" -- are now obscured by the skepticism that has come due to the deep questioning and investigation over time (Kramer, 1998, pp. 199-200). That skepticism among scholars has also been brought on by a lack of "accord" between what Freud
Freud's invention, 'psychoanalysis', wherein the patient would be encouraged by the doctor to talk freely about his varied memories and dreams and associations and thoughts, which became an important part of the psychiatric treatment of patients suffering from mental illnesses, in later years, was, when first introduced in the Vienna of the end of the century, openly ridiculed. When Freud's 'Interpretation of Dreams' was released, there was a commotion as
The personal and scientific environments within which Freud grew up therefore represent his primary influences. A further influence came in the form of physics. The second half of the nineteenth century, during which Freud did most of his important work, saw great advances in physics. According to Thornton, the discovery mostly responsible for this was Helmholz's principle of conservation energy. Helmholz held that the total amount of energy in a
116). By defining these elements, he constructs a safe model that only applies to his people. Still it was this premise of the potential illness found in the Jewish male that shaped "the discourse of psychoanalysis concerning gender and identity. The next step in his revolutionary study came with defining his style of psychology. He believed in determination as a construct. This was defined; as one's action is causally determined