COMIC RELIEF IN ABSURDITY OF IT ALL.

Byline: Reed Johnson Staff Writer

Take his Oedipus complex - please!

But seriously, folks ... Sigmund Freud had a million of 'em. Not jokes, exactly, but humorous observations, clever insights, witty rejoinders and just plain loony ideas, sprinkled throughout his 30-odd volumes of psychoanalytic profundities.

And we do mean ``odd.''

Who else, after all, but a comic genius - or maybe a madman - would claim to see a giant blue vulture in Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Virgin Mary with St. Anne? Who else would propose that Moses was really an Egyptian?

When he wasn't writing about gloomy stuff like boys killing their fathers and European society's collective death wish, Freud could be, well, downright amusing. And as the Skirball Cultural Center ponders his legacy this spring with the exhibition ``Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture,'' it's paying lots of attention to the lighter side of the godfather of the subconscious.

``I like to joke about Freud,'' says Michael S. Roth, exhibition curator and associate director of the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. ``I think Freud is one of the most stimulating authors I know, but that doesn't mean you can't have a good time with the material.''

The mirth begins in the Skirball exhibition galleries, where clips from TV programs like ``The Simpsons,'' ``The Bob Newhart Show'' and films such as the Bill Murray-Richard Dreyfuss psychiatric send-up ``What About Bob?'' are being used to illustrate pop culture's casual appropriation of Freud's major theories.

In conjunction with the main show, the Skirball also is sponsoring a ``Psycho Cinema'' series, which includes the 1967 cult-hit satire ``The President's Analyst,'' with James Coburn in the title role. As the world capital of self-absorption, Hollywood has always been fascinated with psychotherapy, a tendency that may have peaked during the Swingin' '60s, says ``President's Analyst'' producer Stanley Rubin.

``If you weren't going through some type of psychotherapy, you were being left out,'' he recalls.

There's also a ``Psycho Television'' series at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills, featuring episodes of ``The Sopranos,'' ``The Twilight Zone'' and other shows.

But the real Freudian belly laughs should commence with two scheduled comedy programs. ``Mommy Dearest'' (May 4) promises ``a walk on the matri-cide'' with comedians Julia Sweeney, Ellen Cleghorne, Merrill Markoe and host Beth Lapides discussing their relationships with their mothers. On June 25, stand-up comic, actor and sitcom director David Steinberg (``Mad About You'') will reflect on how Freud ``ruined his life'' in ``Freud, Groucho and Me.''

For added comic measure, the Skirball is selling tongue-in-cheek memorabilia such as a $24 pair of Freudian Slippers (``Now you can really put your foot in it.''), a 50-minute Sigmund Freud Watch (suitable for those shrinking encounters), and a singing Sigmund Freud Pin that plays ``Try to Remember'' when you flip the switch implanted in Freud's head.

Of course, the connection between Freud and humor is nothing new. Freud himself wrote extensively about comedy, and psychoanalysis has drawn ridicule ever since its invention.

Even in America, where therapy's reception among bohemians and progressives was especially intense, Freud quickly became comic fodder. George and Ira Gershwin took a poke at him and his followers in their 1933 musical ``Pardon My English.'' Its characters included six glib therapists named Freud, Jung and Adler (one matched pair of each), offering advice to the ``oversexed,'' the ``undersexed'' and those who ``haven't any sex at all.''

But it took confessional comics like Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld to fully exploit psychotherapy's comic potential, says Lapides.

``I think the whole idea of over-analyzing is kind of the nugget, if you will, of modern or post-modern humor,'' she says. ``If you really go to what seems very modern in a comic, it is this sort of analysis and overanalysis of the psyche, and the cultural psyche.''

In modern stand-up routines, the comedian often functions in the dual role of therapist and patient, Lapides points out. The stand-up articulates the audience's hidden fears and desires, as a therapist might, while simultaneously serving as a neurotic surrogate, spilling out his or her guts to anyone who'll pay to listen.

The comic-confessional mode is now such an integral part of the American personality that ordinary people shift into it reflexively, particularly when confronted with a microphone or TV camera.

``We did become a talking culture,'' Lapides says. ``We all became people who became comfortable with mulling over our lives in public.''

Lapides, incidentally, never has been in analysis and considers herself more a Jungian than a Freudian.

``I'm too much of a futurist to dwell too much in the past,'' she says. ``I myself just got to the point where it was just OK not to be OK, and moved on.'' Currently, she's big into power yoga.

Producer Rubin sees ``a close relationship'' in America linking therapy, comedy, performance and the craving for instant celebrity.

``What about the Jerry Springer performers?'' he says. ``I've turned that show on and stared in disbelief that people would expose themselves to this. But all of this, I think, owes something to Freud.''

And what would Freud make of it all?

Rubin chuckles.

``Why, I think he would have had a hell of a good laugh. Because he had a sense of humor.''