Elliott Oring surveys Freud's Jewish jokes from the standpoint of their analytic significance, especially in relation to his Jewish identity. Freud informed Fliess on June 12, 18971 that he had begun to make a "significant" collection of Jewish jokes, a trend that coincided with his collection of dreams and the beginnings of self-analysis. The relation between the mental processes in dreams and jokes also drew his interest, and he referred to the wittiness of many dreams—e.g., the element of absurdity, based on embittered criticism, which permeated both.