Freud - Complete Works (284 page)

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1621

   We should thus find no difficulty
in indicating the aims of any new attempt to throw light on jokes.
To be able to count on success, we should have either to approach
the work from new angles or to endeavour to penetrate further by
increased attention and deeper interest. We can resolve that we
will at least not fail in this last respect. It is striking with
what a small number of instances of jokes recognized as such the
authorities are satisfied for the purposes of their enquiries, and
how each of them takes the same ones over from his predecessors. We
must not shirk the duty of analysing the same instances that have
already served the classical authorities on jokes. But it is our
intention to turn besides to fresh material so as to obtain a
broader foundation for our conclusions. It is natural then that we
should choose as the subjects of our investigation examples of
jokes by which we ourselves have been most struck in the course of
our lives and which have made us laugh the most.

   Is the subject of jokes worth so
much trouble? There can, I think, be no doubt of it. Leaving on one
side the personal motives which make me wish to gain an insight
into the problems of jokes and which will come to light in the
course of these studies, I can appeal to the fact that there is an
intimate connection between all mental happenings - a fact which
guarantees that a psychological discovery even in a remote field
will be of an unpredictable value in other fields. We may also bear
in mind the peculiar and even fascinating charm exercised by jokes
in our society. A new joke acts almost like an event of universal
interest; it is passed from one person to another like the news of
the latest victory. Even men of eminence who have thought it worth
while to tell the story of their origins, of the cities and
countries they have visited, and of the important people with whom
they have associated, are not ashamed in their autobiographies to
report their having heard some excellent joke.¹

  
¹
Von Falke’s
Memoirs
,
1897.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1622

II

THE
TECHNIQUE OF JOKES

Let us follow up a lead presented to us by
chance and consider the first example of a joke that we came across
in the preceding chapter.

   In the part of his
Reisebilder
entitled ‘Die Bäder von Lucca’
Heine introduces the delightful figure of the lottery-agent and
extractor of corns, Hirsch-Hyacinth of Hamburg, who boasts to the
poet of his relations with the wealthy Baron Rothschild, and
finally say: ‘And, as true as God shall grant me all good
things, Doctor, I sat beside Salomon Rothschild and he treated me
quite as his equal - quite famillionairely.’

   Heymans and Lipps used this joke
(which is admittedly an excellent and most amusing one) to
illustrate their view that the comic effect of jokes is derived
from ‘bewilderment and illumination’ (see above). We,
however, will leave that question on one side and ask another:
‘What is it that makes Hirsch-Hyacinth’s remark into a
joke?’ There can be only two possible answers: either the
thought expressed in the sentence possesses in itself the character
of being a joke or the joke resides in the expression which the
thought has been given in the sentence. In whichever of these
directions the character of being a joke may lie, we will pursue it
further and try to lay hands on it.

   A thought can in general be
expressed in various linguistic forms - in various words, that is -
which can represent it with equal aptness. Hirsch-Hyacinth’s
remark presents his thought in a particular form of expression and,
as it seems to us, a specially odd form and not the one which is
most easily intelligible. Let us try to express the same thought as
accurately as possible in other words. Lipps has already done so,
and in that way has to some extent explained the poet’s
intention. He writes (1898, 87): ‘Heine, as we understand it,
means to say that his reception was on familiar terms - of the not
uncommon kind, which does not as a rule gain in agreeableness from
having a flavour of millionairedom about it.’ We shall not be
altering the sense of this if we give it another shape which
perhaps fits better into Hirsch-Hyacinth’s speech:
‘Rothschild treated me quite as his equal, quite familiarly
that is, so far as a millionaire can.’ ‘A rich
man’s condescension’, we should add, ‘always
involves something not quite pleasant for whoever experiences
it.’¹

  
¹
We shall return to this same joke later on;
and we shall then have occasion to make a correction in the
translation of it given by Lipps which our own version has taken as
its starting-point. This, however, will not affect the discussion
that follows here.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1623

   Whether, now, we keep to the one
or the other of the two equally valid texts of the thought, we can
see that the question we asked ourselves is already decided. In
this example the character of being a joke does not reside in the
thought. What Heine has put into Hirsch-Hyacinth’s mouth is a
correct and acute observation, an observation of unmistakable
bitterness, which is understandable in a poor man faced by such
great wealth; but we should not venture to describe it as in the
nature of a joke. If anyone is unable in considering the
translation to get away from his recollection of the shape given to
the thought by the poet, and thus feels that nevertheless the
thought in itself is also in the nature of a joke, we can point to
a sure criterion of the joking character having been lost in the
translation. Hirsch-Hyacinth’s remark made us laugh aloud,
whereas its accurate translation by Lipps or our own version of it,
though it may please us and make us reflect, cannot possibly raise
a laugh.

   But if what makes our example a
joke is not anything that resides in its thought, we must look for
it in the form, in the wording in which it is expressed. We have
only to study the peculiarity of its form of expression to grasp
what may be termed the verbal or expressive technique of this joke,
something which must stand in an intimate relation with the essence
of the joke, since, if it is replaced by something else, the
character and effect of the joke disappear. Moreover, in
attributing so much importance to the verbal form of jokes we are
in complete agreement with the authorities. Thus Fischer (1889, 72)
writes: ‘It is in the first place its sheer
form
that
makes a judgement into a joke, and we are reminded of a saying of
Jean Paul’s which, in a single aphorism, explains and
exemplifies this precise characteristic of jokes - "Such is
the victorious power of sheer position, whether among warriors or
words.”’

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1624

   In what, then, does the
‘technique’ of this joke consist? What has happened to
the thought, as expressed, for instance, in our version, in order
to turn it into a joke that made us laugh so heartily? Two things -
as we learn by comparing our version with the poet’s text.
First, a considerable
abbreviation
has occurred. In order to
express fully the thought contained in the joke, we were obliged to
add to the words ‘R. treated me quite as his equal, quite
familiarly’ a postscript which, reduced to its shortest
terms, ran ‘that is, so far as a millionaire can’. And
even so we felt the need for a further explanatory sentence.¹
The poet puts it far more shortly: ‘R. treated me quite as
his equal - quite famillionairely.’ In the joke, the whole
limitation added by the second sentence to the first, which reports
the familiar treatment, has disappeared.

   But not quite without leaving a
substitute from which we can reconstruct it. For a second change
has also been made. The word ‘
familiär
[familiarly]’ in the unjoking expression of the thought has
been transformed in the text of the joke into
‘
famillionär
[famillionairly]’; and there
can be no doubt that it is precisely on this verbal structure that
the joke’s character as a joke and its power to cause a laugh
depend. The newly constructed word coincides in its earlier portion
with the ‘
familiär
’ of the first sentence,
and in its final syllables with the ‘
Millionär
' of the second sentence. It stands, as it were, for the
‘
Millionär
’ portion of the second sentence
and thus for the
whole
second sentence, and so puts us in a
position to infer the second sentence that has been omitted in the
text of the joke. It can be described as a ‘composite
structure’ made up of the two components
‘
familiär
’ and
‘
Millionär
’, and it is tempting to give a
diagrammatic picture of the way in which it is derived from those
two words:²

                                               
F A M I L I        Ä R

                       
                       
      M I L I O N Ä R

                                               
F A 
M I L I 
ON
 
Ä R

  
¹
This is equally true of Lipps’s
translation.

  
²
The two words are printed one in Roman and
the other in Italic type, and the syllables common to them both are
printed in thick type. The second ‘l’, which is
scarcely pronounced, could of course be left out of account. It
seems probable that the fact of the two words having several
syllables in common offered the joke-technique the occasion for
constructing the composite word.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1625

   The process which has converted
the thought into a joke can then be represented in the following
manner, which may at first sight seem fantastic, but nevertheless
produces precisely the outcome that is really before us:

                                   
‘R. treated me quite
familiär
,

                                   
     that is, so far as a
Millionär
can.’

Let us now imagine that a compressing force is
brought to bear on these sentences and that for some reason the
second is the less resistant one. It is thereupon made to
disappear, while its most important constituent, the word
‘
Millionär
’, which has succeeded in
rebelling against being suppressed, is, as it were, pushed up
against the first sentence, and fused with the element of that
sentence which is so much like it -
‘
familiär
’. And the chance possibility,
which thus arises, of saving the essential part of the second
sentence actually favours the dissolution of its other, less
important, constituents. The joke is thus generated:

                                   
‘R. treated me quite 
famili  on  är
.’

                                                                       
    /   \

                                                                       
(
mili
)  (
är
)

   If we leave out of account any
such compressing force, which indeed is unknown to us, the process
by which the joke is formed - that is, the joke-technique - in this
instance might be described as ‘condensation accompanied by
the formation of a substitute’; and in the present example
the formation of the substitute consists in the making of a
‘composite word’. This composite word
‘
famillionär
’, which is unintelligible in
itself but is immediately understood in its context and recognized
as being full of meaning, is the vehicle of the joke’s
laughter compelling effect - the mechanism of which, however, is
not made in any way clearer by our discovery of the joke-technique.
In what way can a linguistic process of condensation, accompanied
by the formation of a substitute by means of a composite word, give
us pleasure and make us laugh?  This is evidently a different
problem, whose treatment we may postpone till we have found a way
of approaching it. For the present we will keep to the technique of
jokes.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1626

   Our expectation that the
technique of jokes cannot be a matter of indifference from the
point of view of discovering their essence leads us at once to
enquire whether there are other examples of jokes constructed like
Heine’s ‘
famillionär
’. There are not
very many of them, but nevertheless enough to make up a small group
which are characterized by the formation of composite words. Heine
himself has derived a second joke from the word
‘
Millionär
’ - copying from himself, as it
were. In Chapter XIV of his ‘Ideen’ he speaks of a
‘
Millionarr
’, which is an obvious combination of
‘
Millionär
’ and
‘
Narr
’¹ and, just as in the first example,
brings out a suppressed subsidiary thought.

   Here are some other examples I
have come upon. - There is a certain fountain [
Brunnen
] in
Berlin, the erection of which brought the Chief Burgomaster
Forckenbeck into much disfavour. The Berliners call it the
‘
Forckenbecken
’, and there is certainly a joke
in this description, even though it was necessary to replace the
word ‘
Brunnen
’ by its obsolete equivalent
‘
Becken
’ in order to combine it into a whole
with the name of the Burgomaster. - The voice of Europe once made
the cruel joke of changing a potentate’s name from Leopold to
Cleopold, on account of the relations he had at one time with a
lady with the first name of Cleo. This undoubted product of
condensation keeps alive an annoying allusion at the cost of a
single letter. - Proper names in general fall easy victims to this
kind of treatment by the joke-technique. There were in Vienna two
brothers named Salinger, one of whom was a
Börsensensal
. This provided a handle for calling him
‘Sensalinger’, while his brother, to distinguish him,
was given the unflattering name of
‘Scheusalinger’² This was convenient, and
certainly a joke; I cannot say whether it was justified. But jokes
do not as a rule enquire much into that.