The concept of humor is incredibly complicated, having been subjected to complex analysis and countless ways of use from the time of the ancient Greeks to the modern era. Comedy masters and their works have become part of the human experience, ranging from Shakespeare's masterful Much Ado About Nothing to the much-loved television series I Love Lucy. Humor, while in many ways considered largely mass-market and tailored to the popular majority, has not escaped the realm of academic analysis. Sigmund Freud, in particular, explored many aspects of humor, culminating in his famous work The Joke and its relation to the unconscious. In this essay, I would like to explore Freud's fascinating ideas on the nature of humor, comparing them with the ideas of another expert in his own discipline, the actor and director Woody Allen. Regarding the philosophy of humor and its effect on both the humorist and his listener, Freud and Allen share many concepts of the inner workings and overall process of comedy and wit. This agreement is particularly evident when considering the quality of Jewish humor and the characteristics of the Jewish comedian. Freud's Conception of the Nature of Humor When Freud published The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious, the discipline of psychoanalysis was in its infancy. The Joke was the final work in a series of three books, all of which focused on seemingly minor individual aspects of people's mental lives and discussed how these issues could reveal important clues about the inner workings of the intellect. The first two books were The Interpretation of Dreams, written in 1900, and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, written in 1901. All three works offer better...... middle of paper......eru, Illinois: Carus Publishing, 2004. 132-150. Print.Billig, Michael. “Freud and the language of humor”. The Psychologist 15 9 (2002): 452-455. Electronic.Bleiweiss, Mark E. “The Self-Deprecation and Jewish Humor of Woody Allen.” Woody Allen's films: critical essays. Ed. Charles P. Silet. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. 58-77. Electronics.Freud, Sigmund. The joke and its relationship with the unconscious. New York: Penguin, 2002. Print.Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle: The Standard Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990. Print.Freud, Sigmund. "Humor." International Journal of Psychoanalysis 9 (1928): 1-6. Electronic.Girgus, Sam B. The Films of Woody Allen, Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Electronic. Yacowar, Maurice. Loser Takes All: Woody Allen Comics. New York: Ungar, 1979. Print.