Humour, a topic that engaged Sigmund Freud throughout his career, is richly intertwined with character, with creativity and with the theory and practice of psychoanalytic therapy. Yet, until very recently, analysts ignored Freud’s lead and relegated humour to the periphery of their concerns. Humour and Psyche not only remedies previous neglect of the role of humour in the psychoanalytic situation but opens to a broad and balanced consideration of the role of humour in psychological life. Section 1 provides historical and theoretical perspectives on the concept of humour. In Section 2 contributors turn to the relationship of humour to various aspects of the therapeutic process. Section 3 concludes the volume with three essays on the relationship of humour to character and creativity. They focus on the role of humour in the 25-year correspondence of Freud and Sndor Ferenczi (Duport), on the interweaving of D.W. Winnicott’s comic spirit and theoretical innovations (Rodman), and on the relationship between humour and creativity in the music of the American composer Charles Ives (Feder). Taken together, the contributors to this book re-establish the importance of humour as a topic of psychotherapeutic relevance more than 70 years after Freud’s final essay on the topic. And this relevance, they clearly show, is two-sided: whereas psychoanalytic approaches help us understand humour as a complex developmental achievement, humour per se infuses therapy and other human endeavours with vitality, playfulness and creativity. Delightfully readable from beginning to end, this text edifies as it entertains. Editor James Barron has succeeded in compiling a collection that offers serious insights into our common propensity to be less than serious in the most human of ways.