Humor is a challenge to the realities of life. Yet the form this challenge takes varies depending on which reality one is confronting. The theme of the 21st International Psychoanalysis Meetings of Istanbul, organized by the Istanbul Psychoanalytical Association in 2019, was “Humor and Psychoanalysis.” The present issue includes the texts presented at that congress. Strangely enough—almost like a joke—immediately after this meeting, the world entered a far darker, quieter, and less humorous period: the Covid-19 pandemic. As of 2020, we were compelled to continue our work online. Whether coincidence or the irony of fate is unknown; but this process once again reminded us that humor is not merely an individual defense, but also a form of collective solidarity.

The writings included in this issue show that humor does not only make us laugh, but also touches upon the existential, social, and psychic limits of human beings. In this journey that extends from psychoanalytic approaches to philosophical interpretations, and from individual experiences to collective memory, humor appears as a language, a form of resistance, and at times a healing refuge. From a psychoanalytic perspective, humor is one of the most original expressions of the unconscious. Freud’s 1905 work “Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious” constitutes a theoretical turning point in this field. Here, Freud defines humor both as a mode of mental functioning and as a specific psychic process through which repressed drives find expression. Like dreams and slips of the tongue, humor is a way in which the unconscious expresses itself. According to Freud, the joke provides pleasure to the individual through the indirect expression of repressed desires and temporarily frees the ego from the pressure of the superego. In this sense, humor can be understood not only as a mode of expression, but also as a defense mechanism, a strategy of resistance, and the language of psychic relief.

Henri Bergson, on the other hand, approaches humor from a different philosophical perspective. According to him, humor is a response to rigidified, mechanized behaviors that stand in contrast to the flexibility of life. In “Laughter”, he defines the comic as “the mechanical encrusted upon the living.” For Bergson, humor emerges when the individual fails to remain flexible within social life- when one becomes a captive of habits and automatic behaviors. In this respect, humor also carries a normative function that helps maintain social order: it corrects and disciplines by making us laugh.

Spinoza’s understanding of joy in the “Ethics” adds a distinctive dimension to this framework. According to Spinoza, joy that arises from an external cause is a passive affect; but when this joy transforms the individual’s relationship with the world through reason, it becomes an active affect. This perspective allows us to think of humor not merely as reactivity, but also as a process of wisdom and awareness. Thus, Freud links humor to an internal psychic economy, Bergson to an external social structure, and Spinoza to the liberation of reason. The approaches of these three thinkers reveal how humor possesses a multilayered structure, with both inward- and outward-oriented dimensions.

The writings in this issue demonstrate how humor works not only through individual experiences but also through conflicts embedded in social structures. Within society, humor can at times become exclusionary and destructive; particularly forms of irony and mockery directed at the “other” make visible the oppressive face of group dynamics. What Freud called the “narcissism of minor differences” is at work here: those who resemble each other the most are excluded the most. This social tendency can turn humor into both a space of freedom and an instrument of oppression. Ultimately, the texts you will read present humor not merely as a form of expression, but as a field that allows us to trace the movement within the deep structures of the human psyche, culture, and language. Humor is sometimes a moment of laughter; at other times, it is the language of the quietest scream.

I would like to thank the members of the organizing committee who contributed to the realization of this event, and our colleagues who enriched it with their writings, and I wish you an enjoyable reading.

On behalf of the Organizing Committee of the 21st International Psychoanalysis Meetings of Istanbul

TEVFİKA İKİZ

Contents

Presentation | 5

TEVFİKA İKİZ

Humor in the Service of the Individual’s Self-Preservation | 9

BERNARD PENOT / TRANSLATED BY: GÜLCE FIKIRKOCA ATİK

Humor According to Freud | 19

JEAN PIERRE KAMIENIAK / TRANSLATED BY: YİĞİT ARAS

The Transformative Processes of Humor from the Individual to the Social | 31

TEVFİKA İKİZ

On the Function of Humor in the Psychoanalytic Process | 39

EBRU SORGUN GÜLTEKİN

Cinema, Psychoanalysis, and Humor: The Aesthetic Field of the Uncanny | 47

PINAR KANLIKILIÇER

Your Chronic Illness: Reading a Weekly Humor Magazine in the Context of Pleasure and Repetition | 57

BARIŞ ÖZGEN ŞENSOY

Socrates’ Daimons and Psychoanalysis: Humor as a Sublime Experience | 71

İSHAK SAYĞILI

Psychoanalytic References on Social Media | 89

İREM ERDEM ATAK

Aaahh Belinda! Is This a Joke? | 107

SERGUN YILDIZ