Based on James Strachey's Standard Edition, this collection of 15 volumes is the first full paperback edition of Freud's works in English. This volume was edited by Angela Richards.
Jokes and humour allow us to release ideas and emotions which have been repressed, and the euphoria we reach is the same as "the mood of our childhood when we were ignorant of the comic, when we were incapable of jokes and when we had no need of humour to make us feel happy in our life". He contrasts them with dreams - many of their mechanisms are similar, though their function is different. Freud deals with the unconscious and conscious sources of pleasure in jokes and wit, comedy and humour, examining the techniques of jokes, their aim, their social function and the role of the audience. It is considered a minor contribution compared to the epoch-making The Interpretation of Dreams. It includes a rich collection of jokes, particularly those of Jewish folk tradition, in which Freud clearly revelled. Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious is not one of Freud’s most famous or influential books.
The book stands somewhat apart from the rest of Freud's writings as a study of normal, rather than pathological psychology, and, although it contains the most closely reasoned accounts of complicated psychological processes that Freud ever gave, it remains one of his most readable works. Freud thought that jokes revealed something important that we might not want to consider directly.
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