The Politics and Psychoanalysis of Comedy

This book looks at the political aspects of comedy and how humor is shaped by unconscious social and psychological factors within a particular cultural and historical context. Updating Freud’s work on jokes, Robert Samuels argues that any universal model of comedy must take into account the role played by distinct genres, which are themselves determined by particular political psychopathologies. In looking at contemporary comedy, we encounter a structure that is often seen throughout the wo...