Sigmund Freud's Jewish Jokes

This short, four-session course offers an introduction to Sigmund Freud's thought through his 1905 book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, a book full of jokes from the world of Freud's father, not cosmopolitan Vienna, but Jewish Central Europe, a land of matchmakers and schnorrers and ambivalence about assimilation. We will focus on Freud's own texts in order to understand him as a Jewish thinker hoping to operate in a universalistic scientific idiom, trying to produce a science of the mind out of the material of Jewish experience. We will, of course, think about the jokes themselves, and about what they do for us. Freud said they provide "victory," but he never said over what, leaving us to answer that question for ourselves.

• Anyone curious about Freud's Jewish background and how it shaped his thought
• Readers interested in Jewish humor, jokes, and Central European Jewish culture
• Students of psychoanalysis, Freud, or the history of ideas
• Anyone who enjoys close reading of primary texts. No prior background required

• A close reading of Freud's Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
• A new lens for understanding Freud as a Jewish thinker, not just a "universal" scientist
• Familiarity with the world of the jokes themselves: matchmakers, schnorrers, assimilation anxieties, and more
• Your own answer to Freud's unresolved question: what victory do jokes actually provide?