Engaging Humor

9. Sigmund Freud's Jewish Joke Book

9. Sigmund Freud’s Jewish Joke Book Almost a century ago, Sigmund Freud published a book that continues to shape the understanding of humor by scholars and the general public alike. In Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Freud attempted to corral humor, and aesthetic expression more generally, into the domain of the unconscious and the purview of psychoanalytic insight.While Freud presents important hypotheses and stimulating observations on jokes,he also perpetuates classificatory muddles, displays some remarkable blindness, and rides roughshod over data in his effort to wed jokes, the comic, and humor to his metapsychology. So while Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious is in many respects a genuine tour de force, it owes something to the sheer force that Freud brought to bear on the materials he was analyzing. Yet Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious is interesting for reasons other than its contribution to the analysis and interpretation of humor. For in the course of analyzing jokes in order to discover their techniques and purposes, Freud raises the issue of Jewish jokes; those jokes that Jews tell about themselves. As no other ethnic, religious, or social grouping is so featured in the book, the highlighting of Jews and their jokes in the context of a psychological work on joking is at once striking and perplexing.1 For Jewish jokes were in no way essential to any of the points in Freud’s argument about the techniques or purposes of joking.Any number of jokes might have been employed to evidence his arguments.Given his theoretical orientation, the Jewish jokes seem entirely gratuitous. Furthermore, in Freud’s previous psychoanalytic works, Jews are mentioned only in passing, if at all. Only in Moses and Monotheism, written in the very last years of Freud’s life, do Jews Sigmund Freud’s Jewish Joke Book 117 assume a more prominent position than they do in this joke book.All in all, there is something about Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious that can’t help but strike one as just “too Jewish.”2 In fact, Freud himself suggests that this is the case. In his introduction to the book, Freud acknowledges how he is compelled to use many of the joke examples employed by previous scholars.He adds,however,that it is his “intention to turn to fresh material” and that there is a “personal motive” behind his wanting to understand the workings of jokes; a motive that will only come to light in the course of his investigation.The fresh materials that Freud brought to his study were undoubtedly the Jewish jokes. Freud never again referred to the personal motive that impelled his study, but it undoubtedly had something to do with his being a Jew; a Jew who felt some particular kinship with and appreciation of those seemingly trivial entertainments called “Jewish jokes.”3 The number of jokes explicitly identified as Jewish by Freud is 20.4 This is in the context of some 172 jokes and witticisms that he employs in the course of the book, or 12 percent of the total.5 But the great majority of the 172 examples are joking analogies, allusions, aphorisms, and riddles6 rather than jokes and anecdotes proper; that is, rather than texts that describe setting, dramatis personae, action, or dialogue.7 Only some 62 texts meet these latter criteria, and of these, the Jewish jokes constitute a full 33 percent. The Jewish jokes revolve around relatively few topics and themes. Seven (35 percent) concern the schadchen, or Jewish marriage broker, and his efforts to promote a prospective bride to a would-be groom. Five (25 percent) deal with schnorrers [beggars] and borrowers and their tendency to treat their benefactors’ money as their own. Four (20 percent) concern the dirtiness of the Galician Jew8 and are mostly set outside the public bathhouse. The remaining 4 (20 percent) are diverse and deal with a disciple who boasts of the telepathic abilities of his rabbi; a Jew who is facetiously encouraged by his officer to take an entrepreneurial approach to army life; a Jew who accuses a fellow traveler of lying when he has in fact told the truth about his journey; and the presumption of a religious Jew who discovers that the gentleman who has entered his train compartment is also Jewish. In The Jokes of Sigmund Freud, I examined the relation of these jokes to Freud’s personal situation and circumstances.9 Here I...