ABSTRACT
The importance of humour as a psychological phenomenon has long been recognized, both by psychoanalytic and empirically oriented psychologists. Its main interest lies in the fact that it apparently offers an indirect approach to the investigation of the most salient needs, motives and conflicts of an individual or group, including some that might not be accessible by direct verbal report either because they are not consciously recognized or because they are socially unacceptable. Thus, to the psychoanalyst humour is a “window to the unconscious mind”; to the experimental psychologist it is a source of fascinating data involving many variables that may be controlled or manipulated.
