Humor and Psyche: Psychoanalytic Perspectives: James W. Barron. Hillsdale: NJ, The Analytic Press, 1999, 248 pp., $45.00

How do psychoanalysts think about humor, and about the use of humor in psychoanalysis? This multiauthored collection of essays explores both questions in considerable detail. Most of these papers are thought-provoking, many are well written, and some are delightful. Essays by ten authors (Martin Bergmann, Jean Sanville, Barnaby Barratt, James Grotstein, Peter Giovacchini, Ronald Baker, William Meissner, Judith Dupont, Robert Rodman, and Stuart Feder) are divided into three sections: historical and theoretical perspectives on the concept of humor; the role of humor in the therapeutic process; and the relationship of humor to character and creativity. There is rich material here for those who have neither read nor thought much about the meanings and uses of humor, both in and out of the therapeutic situation. Feder's chapter on the role of humor in the creation of a piece of music by Charles Ives is a surprise delight, which readers will appreciate regardless of any prior interest in Ives or his music.

The positive, life-enhancing aspects of humor are elaborated throughout this book. Bergmann describes humor as the product of a developmental stage made possible when the superego is able to adopt a benign and loving attitude toward the ego. He traces this line of thought back to Freud and describes its elaboration by Chasseguet-Smirgel, who wrote of humorists as trying to be their own loving mother, and by Warren Poland, who described the development of a sense of humor as a desirable outcome of analysis, involving an attitude of acceptance and laughter toward oneself and one's place in the world.

Sanville, Grostein, and Giovacchini all stress the association between humor, play, and the creation of a transitional space where creativity can blossom. Sanville sees a sense of humor as evidence of freedom in Winnicott's terms, the opposite of the rigidity and defenses that