1. Monograph Series, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Pub. Co., 2nd Ed., 1912.
2. Monograph Series, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Pub. Co., 2nd Ed., 1916.
3. The Macmillan Co., New York, and Allen & Unwin, London.
4. The Macmillan Co., New York, and T. Fisher Unwin, London.
5. This expression is used advisedly in order to distinguish it from other methods of “analysis,” which Professor Freud fully disavows. Cf. The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, translated by A. A. Brill, The Psychoanalytic Review, June-Sept., 1916.
6. Cf. the works of Freud, Abraham, Rank, and others.
7. Cf. Freud: Totem and Taboo, a translation in preparation, and the works of Jones, Rank and Sachs, Jung, and Storfer.
8. Cf. Freud, Berny, Rank, and Sachs, and Sperber.
9. Cf. Freud: Leonardo da Vinci, a translation in preparation, and the works of many others.
10. Cf. v. Hug-Hellmuth: Aus dem Seelenleben des Kindes, and the works of Jones, Pfister, and many others.
11. Cf. the works of Freud, Putnam, Hitschmann, Winterstein, and others.
12. Beiträge zur Aesthetik, edited by Theodor Lipps and Richard Maria Werner, VI,—a book to which I am indebted for the courage and capacity to undertake this attempt.
13. J. V. Falke: Lebenserinnerungen, 1897.
14. Since this joke will occupy us again and we do not wish to disturb the discussion following here, we shall find occasion later to point out a correction in Lipps’s given interpretation which follows our own.
15. The same holds true for Lipps’s interpretation.
16. Psychanalysis: Its Theories and Application, 2nd Ed., p. 331.
17. This same witticism was supposed to have been coined before by Heine concerning Alfred de Musset.
18. One of the complications involved in the technique of this example lies in the fact that the modification through which the omitted abuse is substituted is to be taken as an allusion to the latter, for it leads to it only through a process of deduction.
19. Another factor which I shall mention later on is also effective in the technique of this witticism. It has to do with the inner character of the modification (representation through the opposite—contradiction). The technique of wit does not hesitate to make use simultaneously of several means, with which, however, we can only become acquainted in their sequential order.
20. Translation of 4th Ed. by A. A. Brill, the Macmillan Co., New York, and Allen & Unwin, London.
21. The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 280.
22. Cited by Brill: Psychanalysis, p. 335.
23. l. c., p. 334.
24. The excellence of these jokes depends upon the fact that they, at the same time, present another technical means of a much higher order.
25. Given by Translator.
26. This resembles an excellent joke of Oliver Wendell Holmes cited by Brill: “Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.” A contradiction is here announced which does not appear. At all events it is a good example of the untranslatableness of the witticisms of such technique.
27. Brill cites a very analogous modification wit: Amantes—Amentes (lovers—lunatics).
28. Compare here K. Fischer (p. 85), who applies the term “double meaning” to those witticisms in which both meanings are not equally prominent, but where one overshadows the other. I have applied this term differently. Such a nomenclature is a matter of choice. Usage of speech has rendered no definite decision about them.
29. L. c., page 339.
30. Heine’s answer is a combination of two wit-techniques—a displacement and an allusion—for he does not say directly: “He is an ox.”
31. The word “take,” owing to its meanings, lends itself very well towards the formation of plays upon words, a pure example of which I wish to cite as a contrast to the displacement mentioned above. While walking with his friend, in front of a café, a well-known stock-plunger and bank director made this proposal: “Let us go in and take something.” His friend held him back and said: “My dear sir, remember there are people in there.”
32. For the latter see a later chapter. It will perhaps not be superfluous to add here a few words for better understanding. The displacement regularly occurs between a statement and an answer, and turns the stream of thought to a direction different from the one started in the statement. The justification for separating the displacement from the double meaning is best seen in the examples where both are combined, that is, where the wording of the statement admits of a double meaning which was not intended by the speaker, but which reveals in the answer the way to the displacement (see examples).
33. See Chapter III.
34. A similar nonsense technique results when the joke aims to maintain a connection which seems to be removed through the special conditions of its content. A joke of this sort is related by J. Falke (l. c.): “Is this the place where the Duke of Wellington spoke these words?” “Yes, this is the place; but he never spoke these words.”
35. Following an example of the Greek Anthology.
36. Cf. my Interpretation of Dreams, Chap. VI, The Dream Work, translated by A. A. Brill, The Macmillan Co., New York, and Allen & Unwin, London.
37. The word tendency encountered hereafter in the expression “Tendency-Wit” (Tendenz Witz) is used adjectively in the same sense as in the familiar phrase “Tendency Play.”
38. Cf. my Psychopathology of Everyday Life, translated by A. A. Brill, The Macmillan Co., New York, and T. Fisher Unwin, London.
39. Cf. Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, 2nd Ed., 1916, translated by A. A. Brill, Monograph Series, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases.
40. Moll’s Kontrektationstrieb (Untersuchungen über die Libido sexualies, 1898).
41. It is the same mechanism that controls “slips of the tongue” and other phenomena of self-betrayal. Cf. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
42. “There is nothing certain about to-morrow,” Lorenzo del Medici.
43. See his essays in the Politisch-anthropologischen Revue, II, 1903.
44. An habitual beggar.
45. If I may be permitted to anticipate what later is discussed in the text I can here throw some light upon the condition which seems to be authoritative in the usage of language when it is a question of calling a joke “good” or “poor.” If by means of a double meaning or slightly modified word I have gotten from one idea to another by a short route, and if this does not also simultaneously result in senseful association between the two ideas, then I have made a “poor” joke. In this poor joke one word or the “point” forms the only existing association between the two widely separated ideas. The joke “Home-Roulard” used above is such an example. But a “good” joke results if the infantile expectation is right in the end and if with the similarity of the word another essential similarity in meaning is really simultaneously produced—as in the examples Traduttore—Traditore (translator—traitor), and Amantes—Amentes (lovers—lunatics). The two disparate ideas which are here linked by an outer association are held together besides by a senseful connection which expresses an important relationship between them. The outer association only replaces the inner connection; it serves to indicate the latter or to clarify it. Not only does “translator” sound somewhat similar to “traitor,” but he is a sort of a traitor whose claims to that name are good. The same may be said of Amantes—Amentes. Not only do the words bear a resemblance, but the similarity between “love” and “lunacy” has been noted from time immemorial.
The distinction made here agrees with the differentiation, to be made later, between a “witticism” and a “jest.” However, it would not be correct to exclude examples like Home-Roulard from the discussion of the nature of wit. As soon as we take into consideration the peculiar pleasure of wit, we discover that the “poor” witticisms are by no means poor as witticisms, i.e., they are by no means unsuited for the production of pleasure.
46. Die Spiele der Menschen, 1899, p. 153.
47. Vorschule der Aesthetik, 1, XVII.
48. Chapter XVII.
49. Kleinpaul: Die Rätsel der Sprache, 1890.
50. Vorschule der Aesthetik, Vol. 1, V, p. 51, 2nd Ed., Leipzig, 1897.
51. The nonsense-witticisms, which have been somewhat slighted in this treatise, deserve a short supplementary comment.
In view of the significance attributed by our conception to the factor “sense in nonsense,” one might be tempted to demand that every witticism should be a nonsense-joke. But this is not necessary, because only the play with thoughts inevitably leads to nonsense, whereas the other source of wit-pleasure, the play with words, makes this impression incidental and does not regularly invoke the criticism connected with it. The double root of wit-pleasure—from the play with words and thoughts, which corresponds to the most important division into word- and thought-witticisms—sets its face against a short formulation of general principles about wit as a tangible aggravation of difficulties. The play with words produces laughter, as is well known, in consequence of the factor of recognition described above, and therefore suffers suppression only in a small degree. The play with thoughts cannot be motivated through such pleasure: it has suffered a very energetic suppression and the pleasure which it can give is only the pleasure of released inhibitions. Accordingly one may say that wit-pleasure shows a kernel of the original play-pleasure and a shell of removal-pleasure. Naturally we do not grant that the pleasure in nonsense-wit is due to the fact that we have succeeded in making nonsense despite the suppression, while we do notice that the play with words gives us pleasure. Nonsense, which has remained fixed in thought-wit, acquires secondarily the function of stimulating our attention through confusion, it serves as a reinforcement of the effect of wit, but only when it is insistent, so that the confusion can anticipate the intellect by a definite fraction of time. That nonsense in wit may also be employed to represent a judgment contained within the thought has been demonstrated by the example on p. 73. But even this is not the primal signification of nonsense in wit.
A series of wit-like productions for which we have no appropriate name, but which may lay claim to the designation of “witty nonsense,” may be added to the nonsense-jokes. They are very numerous, but I shall cite only two examples: As the fish was served to a guest at the table he put both hands twice into the mayonnaise and then ran them through his hair. Being looked at by his neighbor with astonishment he seemed to have noticed his mistake and excused himself, saying: “Pardon me, I thought it was spinach.”
Or: “Life is like a suspension bridge,” said the one. “How is that?” asked the other. “How should I know?” was the answer.
These extreme examples produce an effect through the fact that they give rise to the expectation of wit, so that one makes the effort to find the hidden sense behind the nonsense. But none is found, they are really nonsense. Under that deception it was possible for one moment to liberate the pleasure in nonsense. These witticisms are not altogether without tendencies, they furnish the narrator a certain pleasure in that they deceive and annoy the hearer. The latter then calms his anger by resolving that he himself should take the place of the narrator.
52. H. Spencer, The Physiology of Laughter (first published in Macmillan’s Magazine for March, 1860), Essays, Vol. 11, 1901.
53. Different points in this declaration would demand an exhaustive inquiry into an investigation of the pleasure of the comic, a thing that other authors have already done, and which, at all events, does not touch our discussion. It seems to me that Spencer was not happy in his explanation of why the discharge happens to find just that path, the excitement of which results in the physical picture of laughter. I should like to add one single contribution to the subject of the physiological explanation of laughter, that is, to the derivation or interpretation of the muscular actions that characterize laughter—a subject that has been often treated before and since Darwin, but which has never been conclusively settled. According to the best of my knowledge the grimaces and contortions of the corners of the mouth that characterize laughter appear first in the satisfied and satiated nursling when he drowsily quits the breasts. There it is a correct motion of expression since it bespeaks the determination to take no more nourishment, an “enough,” so to speak, or rather a “more than enough.” This primal sense of pleasurable satiation may have furnished the smile, which ever remains the basic phenomenon of laughter, the later connection with the pleasurable processes of discharge.
54. Cf. The Interpretation of Dreams, Chap. VII, also On the Psychic Force, etc., in the above cited book of Lipps (p. 123), where he says: “This is the general principle: The dominant factors of the psychic life are not represented by the contents of consciousness but by those psychic processes which are unconscious. The task of psychology, provided it does not limit itself to a mere description of the content of consciousness, must also consist of revealing the nature of these unconscious processes from the nature of the contents of consciousness and its temporal relationship. Psychology must itself be a theory of these processes. But such a psychology will soon find that there exist quite a number of characteristics of these processes which are unrepresented in the corresponding contents of consciousness.”
55. Heymans (Zeitschrift für Psychol., XI) has taken up the viewpoint of the nascent state in a somewhat different connection.
56. Through an example of displacement-wit I desire to discuss another interesting character of the technique of wit. The genial actress Gallmeyer when once asked how old she was is said to have answered this unwelcome question with abashed and downcast eyes, by saying, “In Brünn.” This is a very good example of displacement. Having been asked her age, she replied by naming the place of her birth, thus anticipating the next query, and in this manner she wishes to imply: “This is a question which I prefer to pass by.” And still we feel that the character of the witticism does not here come to expression undimmed. The deviation from the question is too obvious; the displacement is much too conspicuous. Our attention understands immediately that it is a matter of an intentional displacement. In other displacement-witticisms the displacement is disguised and our attention is riveted by the effort to discover it. In one of the displacement-witticisms (p. 69) the reply to the recommendation of the horse—“What in the world should I do in Monticello at 6:30 in the morning?”—the displacement is also an obtrusive one, but as a substitute for it it acts upon the attention in a senseless and confusing manner, whereas in the interrogation of the actress we know immediately how to dispose of her displacement answer.
The so-called “facetious questions” which may make use of the best techniques deviate from wit in other ways. An example of the facetious question with displacement is the following: “What is a cannibal who devours his father and mother?—Answer: An orphan.—And when he has devoured all his other relatives?—Sole-heir.—And where can such a monster ever find sympathy?—In the dictionary under S.” The facetious questions are not full witticisms because the required witty answers cannot be guessed like the allusions, omissions, etc., of wit.
57. Cf. The Interpretation of Dreams, Chapter VII.
58. Besides the dream-work and the technique of wit I have been able to demonstrate condensation as a regular and significant process in another psychic occurrence, in the mechanism of normal (not purposive) forgetting. Singular impressions put difficulties in the way of forgetting; impressions in any way analogous are forgotten by becoming fused at their points of contact. The confusion of analogous impressions is one of the first steps in forgetting.
59. Many of my patients while under psychoanalytic treatment are wont to prove regularly by their laughter that I have succeeded in demonstrating faithfully to their conscious perception the veiled unconscious; they laugh also when the content of what is disclosed does not at all justify this laughter. To be sure, it is conditional that they have approached this unconscious closely enough to grasp it when the physician has conjectured it and presented it to them.
60. In doing this we must not forget to reckon with the distortion brought about by the censor which is still active in the psychoses.
61. The Interpretation of Dreams.
62. The character of the comical which is referred to as its “dryness” also depends in the broadest sense upon the differentiation of the things spoken from the antics accompanying it.
63. The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 296.
64. This very remarkable and still inadequately understood behavior of antagonistic relationships is probably not without value for the understanding of the symptom of negativism in neurotics and in the insane. Cf. the two latest works on the subject: Bleuler, “Über die negative Suggestibilität,” Psych.-Neurol. Wochenschrift, 1904, and Otto Groos’s Zur Differential diagnostik negativistischer Phänomene, also my review of the Gegensinn der Urworte, in Jahrb. f. Psychonalyse II, 1910.
65. An expression of G. T. Fechner’s which has acquired significance from the point of view of my conception.
66. Given by Translator.
67. I have everywhere identified the naïve with the naïve-comic, a practice which is certainly not permissible in all cases. But it is sufficient for our purposes to study the characteristics of the naïve as exhibited by the “naïve joke” and the “naïve obscenity.” It is our intention to proceed from here with the investigation of the nature of the comic.
68. Also Bergson (Laughter, An essay on the Meaning of the Comic, translated by Brereton and Rothwell, The Macmillan Co., 1914) rejects with sound arguments this sort of explanation of comic pleasure, which has unmistakably been influenced by the effort to create an analogy to the laughing of a person tickled. The explanation of comic pleasure by Lipps which might, in connection with his conception of the comic, be represented as an “unexpected trifle,” is of an entirely different nature.
69. The recollection of this innervation expenditure will remain the essential part of the idea of this motion, and there will always be methods of thought in my psychic life in which the idea will be represented by nothing else than this expenditure. In other connections a substitute for this element may possibly be put in the form of other ideas, for instance the visual idea of the object of the motion, or it may be put in the form of the word-idea; and in certain types of abstract thought a sign instead of the full content itself may suffice.
70. “What one has not in his head,” as the saying goes, “he must have in his legs.”
71. The problem has been greatly confused by the general conditions determining the comic, whereby the comic pleasure is seen to have its source now in a too-muchness and now in a not-enoughness.
72. Degradation: A. Bain (The Emotions and the Will, 2nd Ed., 1865) states: “The occasion of the ludicrous is the degradation of some person of interest possessing dignity, in circumstances that excite no other strong emotion” (p. 248).
73. “Thus every conscious and clever evocation of the comic is called wit, be it the comic of views or situations. Naturally we cannot use this view of wit here.” Lipps, l. c., p. 78.
74. At the most this is inserted by the dreamer as an explanation.
75. l. c., p. 294.
76. “Trente et quarante” is a gambling game.
77. Bergson, l. c., p. 29.
78. Sixth Ed., Berlin, 1891.
79. “You may well laugh, that no longer concerns you.”
80. That comic pleasure has its source in the “quantitative contrast,” in the comparison of big and small, which ultimately also expresses the essential relation of the child to the grown-up, would indeed be a peculiar coincidence if the comic had nothing else to do with the infantile.
81. “Our heads have the right to fall covered before thee.”
82. The excellent humoristic effect of a character like that of the fat knight, Sir John Falstaff, is based on economised contempt and indignation. To be sure we recognise in him the unworthy glutton and fashionably dressed swindler, but our condemnation is disarmed through a whole series of factors. We understand that he knows himself to be just as we estimate him; he impresses us through his wit; and besides that, his physical deformity produces a contact-effect in favor of a comic conception of his personality instead of a serious one; as if our demands for morality and honor must recoil from such a big stomach. His activities are altogether harmless and are almost excused by the comic lowness of those he deceives. We admit that the poor devil has a right to live and enjoy himself like any one else, and we almost pity him because in the principal situation we find him a puppet in the hands of one much his superior. It is for this reason that we cannot bear him any grudge and turn all we economize in him in indignation into comic pleasure which he otherwise provides. Sir John’s own humor really emanates from the superiority of an ego which neither his physical nor his moral defects can rob of its joviality and security.
On the other hand the courageous knight Don Quixote de la Mancha is a figure who possesses no humor, and in his seriousness furnishes us a pleasure which can be called humoristic although its mechanism shows a decided deviation from that of humor. Originally Don Quixote is a purely comic figure, a big child whose fancies from his books on knighthood have gone to his head. It is known that at first the poet wanted to show only that phase of his character, and that the creation gradually outgrew the author’s original intentions. But after the poet endowed this ludicrous person with the profoundest wisdom and noblest aims and made him the symbolic representation of an idealism, a man who believed in the realization of his aims, who took duties seriously and promises literally, he ceased to be a comic personality. Like humoristic pleasure which results from a prevention of emotional feelings it originates here through the disturbance of comic pleasure. However, in these examples we already depart perceptibly from the simple cases of humor.
83. A term which is used in quite a different sense in the Aesthetik of Theo. Vischer.
84. If one does not hesitate to do some violence to the conception of expectation, one may ascribe—according to the process of Lipps—a very large sphere of the comic to the comic of expectation; but probably the most original cases of the comic which result through a comparison of a strange expenditure with one’s own will fit least into this conception.
85. The characteristic of the “double face” naturally did not escape the authors. Melinaud, from whom I borrowed the above expression, conceives the condition for laughing in the following formula: “Ce qui fait rire c’est qui est à la fois, d’un coté, absurde et de l’autre, familier” (“Pourquoi rit-on?” Revue de deux mondes, February, 1895). This formula fits in better with wit than with the comic, but it really does not altogether cover the former. Bergson (l. c., p. 96) defines the comic situation by the “reciprocal interference of series,” and states: “A situation is invariably comic when it belongs simultaneously to two altogether independent series of events and is capable of being interpreted in two entirely different meanings at the same time.” According to Lipps the comic is “the greatness and smallness of the same.”