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The unriddler of riddles who found the key to the human condition in the story of Oedipus was also a lover of jokes. When at the age of 45 he was finally given an associate professorship, the still unknown Dr. Freud reported the event to a friend in mock journalese. He described his promotion as a political triumph:
The public enthusiasm is immense. Congratulations and bouquets keep pouring in, as if the role of sexuality had been suddenly recognized by His Majesty, the interpretation of dreams confirmed by the Council of Ministers, and the necessity of the psychoanalytic therapy of hysteria carried by a two-thirds majority in Parliament [1887-1902, p. 344].
It is a cheerful fantasy, very Viennese: political authority bends the knee to Eros and to dreams.
“Where he makes a jest, a problem lies concealed.” In The Interpretation of Dreams, published two years before his jocular announcement, Freud had laid down his first principle of understanding the problems of dreams: “A dream is the fulfillment of a wish.” At the time of writing, in 1902, he was collecting material to demonstrate that the same rule held true for jokes. “Sometimes,” he added, “the jest brings the solution of the problem to light as well”1