ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author refers two separate areas of the psychoanalytic literature - the many contributions to understanding humor and those that address the nature of Asperger's children - that comprise a large and fascinating terrain that is much too broad to be encompassed in an individual paper. This contribution assumes a narrower focus that specifically deals with the development of the capacity to tell a joke in Asperger's children. The author believes that the abilities involved in the capacity to tell a joke, when disturbed, are intertwined with aspects of the nature of Asperger's pathology and that the treatment of these young patients also opens a window to further insights into the evolution of being able to tell a joke. These issues will be illustrated in clinical material from the psychoanalysis of a young Asperger's boy.
