ABSTRACT
In the interpretation of humor, an encounter with the individual joketeller has been considered superfluous. In Jokes and Their Relotion to the Unconscious, written in 1905, Sigmund Freud analyzed only the techniques and thoughts underlying particular joke texts. Sigmund Freud unraveled the techniques and characterized the underlying thoughts of numerous jokes. Psychoanalysis, born in the intimate contact between physician and patient, has been the interpretive paradigm most sensitive to the history, character, and behavior of the individual. Nevertheless, in the psychoanalytic interpretation of jokes, the individual has also been curiously neglected. Freud was willing to venture an interpretation of a joke in terms of its teller, he at once cautioned against the facile reduction of jokes to personal factors. If a traditional folktale can reflect aspects of individual personality, so can a traditional joke. Virtually every description of Freud by his friends and disciples remarks upon his sense of humor and his penchant for joketelling.
