Sigmund Freud was one of the first modern scholars to recognise jokes as an important object of investigation. In his 1905 study "Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious" Freud describes the social nature of humour and illustrates his text with many examples of contemporary Viennese jokes. His work is particularly noteworthy in this context because Freud distinguishes in his writings between jokes, humour and the comic. These are distinctions which become easily blurred in many subsequent studies where everything funny tends to be gathered under the umbrella term of "humour", making for a much more diffuse discussion.