How to Laugh Your Way Through Life: A Psychoanalyst's Advice

New
Paperback
2013
$34.61

While living in anti-Semitic Vienna, Freud wrote in a letter to Ernest Jones, 'What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. Unlike most books on the psychology and philosophy of humour, and following Ludwig Wittgenstein's wonderful advice-'A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes,' this book is replete with jokes, humorous stories, and amusing maxims and quotes making it a lively reading experience that aims to help people fashion the 'good life'-a life of deep and expansive love, creative and productive work, that is aesthetically pleasing and in accordance with reason and ethics.

Synopsis

While living in anti-Semitic Vienna, Freud wrote in a letter to Ernest Jones, 'What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. Unlike most books on the psychology and philosophy of humour, and following Ludwig Wittgenstein's wonderful advice-'A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes,' this book is replete with jokes, humorous stories, and amusing maxims and quotes making it a lively reading experience that aims to help people fashion the 'good life'-a life of deep and expansive love, creative and productive work, that is aesthetically pleasing and in accordance with reason and ethics.

$34.61

Quantity

5 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 172
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 15 May 2013
ISBN 10: 178049095X
ISBN 13: 9781780490953

Media Reviews

'Paul Marcus has hit the nail on the head - or should I say the nerve of the heart, a heart that is ticklish. This is a beautiful book showing the tragicomic richness of humour as part of life, as aid to living, as opener of soul dimensions, and affirming of everyday life touched by transcendence. He takes us on a tour of humour in psychoanalysis, culture, life and death in many modes, adding to our appreciation of who we are and what life is. I laughed and cried and learned through the ways that truth and love and fun can tickle, touch and enlighten.'- Michael Eigen, PhD, author of Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis and Contact with the Depths'Beautifully blending insights from psychology and sociology, Marcus has convinced me that embracing a tragicomic vision , as he calls it, is an essential quality of mind if we are to prevail amidst the many difficulties of everyday life. Filled with poignant and humorous examples, this book was a pleasure to read and learn from.'- William B. Helmreich, PhD, Professor of Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center, and author of The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles to Understand a City

Author Bio

Paul Marcus, PhD, is a supervising and training analyst at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. He is the author of 'Being for The Other: Emmanuel Levinas, Ethical Living and Psychoanalysis; Autonomy in the Extreme Situation: Bruno Bettelheim, the Nazi Concentration Camps, and the Mass Society' and 'Ancient Religious Wisdom, Spirituality and Psychoanalysis', among other books. Dr Marcus is married with two children and lives in Great Neck, New York.