Ego, repression, innuendo, a Freudian slip - ”what’s not funny about Sigmund Freud? In fact, Freud proposed one of the original theories of laughter back in 1905, arguing that humor is “best fulfilled precisely by Jewish jokes.” But when and why did the Jews become “funny,” and how did Freud’s own conflicted Jewish identity inform his development of psychoanalysis?

Sander Gilman, a scholar of Jewish cultural and literary history and professor of the humanities at Emory University, explores Freud’s unique and influential understanding of the role of laughter in the human psyche.

Recorded Saturday, November 07, 2009 at Chicago Cultural Center.