Book Condition: Very Good in Near Fine DJ, with slight tropical speckling to Page Edges. Otherwise, clean, clear text in tightly bound volume. No internal inscriptions, markings or stains. First Edition, First Printing. Bibliography: p209-223. Includes index. Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches. Weight: 6.4 ounces. Surveys the various psychological theories which attempt to explain the nature of laughter, and explores the relationship between humor and a person's sense of identity. Why are some things funny and some aren't? Why do we laugh at a joke at one time but not the other? What mechanisms lie behind humor and wit? If you have ever pondered these questions and want a detailed and exhaustive answer, then the book "Laughing: A Psychology of Humor" by Norman N. Holland is for you. Norman's enthralling style of writing and his attention to details while being able to build a broad picture makes the book well-worth reading. Without being excessively specialized and hard to read like many books of this kind get, he manages to grasp the topic very precisely and clearly. His language is not overly technical, nor cryptic, and his book is full of humorous remarks and quotations of famous philosophers and comics. The book consists of two parts. First part deals with a wide range of existing theories about the comic. It devotes a separate chapter to every major aspect of laughter: stimuli, conditions, psychology, physiology and catharsis. The second part of the book reports on some real people laughing. It presents various real-life situations and explains why different persons find it funny or not funny. This section gives a chance to fully understand various theories on laughter and how they work in reality. Below, Norman presents a problem of measuring the effect of a joke experimentally: "To be sure, being doubled over argues more amusement than a thin smile. But does a two-second titter mean twice as much hilarity as a one-second guffaw? Does a loud haw-haw mean the person feels the joke is ten decibels funnier than someone who laughs a tiny hee-hee?" 'Laughter: the psychology of humor' is a also very detailed and comprehensive information resource. Here is how he introduces theories on humor: "I can distinguish four large groups of psychological theories about the comic, based on archetypes, conscious feelings, psychoanalysis, and experiments. They vary widely in the complexity of the answers they give and in the kinds of human laws they presuppose. Unlike the theories based on stimulus and conditions, all psychological theories locate the source of the laughable and laughed-at instead of in the laughed-at alone"
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