College Publications logo   College Publications title  
View Basket
Homepage Contact page
   
 
AiML
Academia Brasileira de Filosofia
Algorithmics
Arts
Cadernos de Lógica e Computação
Cadernos de Lógica e Filosofia
Cahiers de Logique et d'Epistemologie
Communication, Mind and Language
Computing
Comptes Rendus de l'Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences
Cuadernos de lógica, Epistemología y Lenguaje
DEON
Dialogues
Economics
Encyclopaedia of Logic
Filosofia
Handbooks
Historia Logicae
IfColog series in Computational Logic
Journal of Applied Logics - IfCoLog Journal
Journals
Landscapes
Logics for New-Generation AI
Logic and Law
Logic and Semiotics
Logic PhDs
Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science
The Logica Yearbook
Marked States
Neural Computing and Artificial Intelligence
Philosophy
Research
The SILFS series
Studies in Logic
Studies in Talmudic Logic
Student Publications
Systems
Texts in Logic and Reasoning
Texts in Mathematics
Tributes
Other
Digital Downloads
Information for authors
About us
Search for Books
 



Other


Back

Laughter

Eric Smadja

The discourse about laughter that has now become traditional, seems to summon to mind three principal characteristics of laughter: its specifically human nature; its structural relationship to the joy and pleasure procured by what is laughable; its automatic, reflexive aspect. Furthermore, numerous scholars have expressed ideas, certain ones of which have been structured into explanatory theories claiming general applicability.

These two types of discourse seem unsatisfactory to me. The first one seems to obscure two fundamental aspects of laughter: its historicity and the complexity of its determinism. By atomizing its object, the second one, being merely analytic, offers a reductionist vision having little heuristic value.

I think that laughter, like all human behavior, referring to the human complexity, must be the object of a multidisciplinary approach involving biological, psychological and socio-cultural considerations. So, it requires turning to the conceptual set of tools and the unique methods of the following disciplines: ethology, medicine, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology and anthropology. And the idea of communication could well be the unifying concept.

Eric Smadja is a psychiatrist, a psychoanalyst, a member of the Société psychanalytique de Paris and of the International Psychoanalytical Association, a couples psychoanalyst and also an anthropologist, associate member of the American Anthropological Association. Prize awarded by the International Psychoanalytical Association in 2007 for an "exceptional contribution made to psychoanalytical research", he is the author of various books: The Oedipus Complex, Crystallizer of the debate between Psychoanalysis and Anthropology, PUF, 2009; The Human Couple: A Multidimensional History, PUF, 2011; Couples in Psychoanalysis (Dir.), PUF, 2013; Freud and Culture, PUF, (September) 2013.


5 September 2013

978-1-84890-119-3






© 2005–2024 College Publications / VFH webmaster