Freud argues that the "joke-work" is intimately related to the "dream-work" which he had analyzed in detail in his Interpretation of Dreams, and that jokes (like all forms of humor) attest to the fundamental orderliness of the human mind. While in this book Freud tells some good stories with his customary verve and economy, its point is wholly serious. -- Publisher description.

I. Analytic part. Introduction --- The technique of jokes --- The purpose of jokes ---- II. Synthetic part. The mechanism of pleasure and the psychogenesis of jokes --- The motives of Jokes-jokes as a social process ---- III. Theoretic Part. The relation of jokes to dreams and to the unconscious --- Jokes and the species of the comic.