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Herbert Strean's Jokes is a wonderful collection of over 300 jokes, which rivals Freud's gathering of mostly Jewish jokes in 1905. The commentary, however, is mostly of interest for what it reveals about the author, especially in his favorite jokes, which are not necessarily the funniest in the book. Why does the author tell us over and over again that good jokes are like good sex and that laughter resembles nothing so much as orgasm? Many of the jokes are those that psychoanalysts tell to relieve their own anxiety, as in the following:
A sexy woman enters an analyst's office for the first time. The analyst orders her to take off all her clothes and he does the same. He then gets on the couch with her and makes love. “We've taken care of my problem,” says the analyst, “now, what's yours?” (p. 200)
This is obviously a joke about countertransference, but what significance should we attach to the fact that this was among the many jokes told the author by his brother-in-law?
Strean's collection of 21 essays on the use of humor in psychotherapy is a much more significant—but not so delightful—book. Sixteen of these essays have been previously published in professional journals, and the book is very practical in its orientation. It is also highly polemical because it gathers essays that defend the value of humor in therapy against a strong presupposition that humor should be avoided. Strean reprints Lawrence S. Kubie's classic essay, “The Destructive Potential of Humor in Psychotherapy” , but that is the only essay on the negative side. Virtually