Recursion HALP

Hey /prog/, I must say my understanding of recursion is shit (never really dealt with recursion in all my days of writing bad code). How should I go about thinking about it?

inb4 flaming: I understand the recursive concept in some contexts, such as when it is used in a factorial function, but when it starts getting more ambiguous (say, exercise 5, ch. 2 from ANSI Common Lisp) it's ugly.

inb4 RECURSE MY ANUS

>>23
Again, why don't you fist F5 before repeating yourself?
Umm.... a function can be a variable.
Well done. I acknowledged this in the very post you were referencing. Observe:
It could be variable
Now, rinse and repeat for every fucking thing you decided to blurt out in your latest rambling, regardless of how many times you have repeated yourself. If you cannot find an answer, please redirect yourself to /g/ or /sci/ or something.