Freud - Complete Works (290 page)

   But we must recall that what we
are concerned with is not Soulié’s simile - which is a
possible joke - but Heine’s reply, which is certainly a much
better one. That being so, we have no right to touch the phrase
about the Golden Calf: it remains as the precondition of
Heine’s
mot
and our reduction must be directed only to
the latter. If we expand the words ‘Oh, he must be older than
that by now!’ we can only replace them by something like:
‘Oh, he’s not a calf any longer; he’s a
full-grown ox!’ Thus what was necessary for Heine’s
joke was that he should no longer take the ‘Golden
Calf’ in a metaphorical but in a personal sense and should
apply it to the rich man himself. It may even be that this double
meaning was already present in Soulié’s remark.

   But just a moment! It looks now
as though this reduction has not done away with Heine’s joke
completely, but on the contrary has left its essence untouched. The
position now is that Soulié says: ‘Look there! Look at
the way the nineteenth century is worshipping the Golden
Calf!’ and Heine replies: ‘Oh, he’s not a calf
any longer; he’s an ox already!’ And in this reduced
version it is still a joke. But no other reduction of Heine’s
mot
is possible.

   It is a pity that this fine
example involves such complicated technical conditions. We can
arrive at no clarification of it. So we will leave it and look for
another one in which we seem to detect an internal kinship with its
predecessor.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1653

   It is one of the ‘bath
jokes’ which treat of the Galician Jews’ aversion to
baths. For we do not insist upon a patent of nobility from our
examples. We make no enquiries about their origin but only about
their efficiency - whether they are capable of making us laugh and
whether they deserve our theoretical interest. And both these two
requirements are best fulfilled precisely by Jewish jokes.

   ‘Two Jews met in the
neighbourhood of the bath-house. "Have you taken a bath?"
asked one of them. "What?" asked the other in return,
"is there one missing?"'

   If one laughs at a joke really
heartily, one is not in precisely the best mood for investigating
its technique. Hence some difficulties arise over making
one’s way into these analyses. ‘It was a comical
misunderstanding’, we are inclined to say. Yes but what is
the technique of the joke? Clearly the use of the word
‘take’ in two meanings. For one of the speakers
‘take’ was the colourless auxiliary; for the other it
was the verb with its sense unwatered down. Thus it is a case of
the same word used ‘full’ and ‘empty’
(Group II (
f
)). If we replace the expression ‘taken a
bath’ by the equivalent and simpler ‘bathed’, the
joke vanishes. The reply no longer fits. Thus the joke is once
again attached to the form of expression ‘taken a
bath’.

   That is so. But nevertheless it
seems as though in this case too the reduction has been applied at
the wrong point. The joke lies not in the question but in the
answer - the second question: ‘What? is there one
missing?’ And this answer cannot be robbed of being a joke by
any extension or modification, so long as its sense is not
interfered with. We have an impression, too, that in the second
Jew’s reply the disregarding of the bath is more important
than the misunderstanding of the word ‘take’. But here
once more we cannot see our way clearly, and we will look for a
third example.

   It is again a Jewish joke; but
this time it is only the setting that is Jewish, the core belongs
to humanity in general. No doubt this example too has its unwanted
complications, but fortunately they are not the same ones that have
so far prevented us from seeing clearly.

   ‘An impoverished individual
borrowed 25 florins from a prosperous acquaintance, with many
asseverations of his necessitous circumstances. The very same day
his benefactor met him again in a restaurant with a plate of salmon
mayonnaise in front of him. The benefactor reproached him:
"What? You borrow money from me and then order yourself salmon
mayonnaise? Is
that
what you’ve used my money
for?" "I don’t understand you", replied the
object of the attack; "if I haven’t any money I
can’t
eat salmon mayonnaise, and if I have some money
I
mustn’t
eat salmon mayonnaise. Well, then, when
am
I to eat salmon mayonnaise?"'

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1654

   Here at last no more trace of a
double meaning is to be found. Nor can the repetition of
‘salmon mayonnaise’ contain the joke’s technique,
for it is not ‘multiple use’ of the same material but a
real repetition of identical material called for by the
subject-matter of the anecdote. We may for a time be quite baffled
by this analysis and may even think of taking refuge in denying
that the anecdote - though it made us laugh - possesses the
character of a joke.

   What more is there deserving of
comment in the impoverished person’s reply? That it has been
very markedly given the form of a logical argument. But quite
unjustifiably, for the reply is in fact illogical. The man defends
himself for having spent the money lent to him on a delicacy and
asks, with an appearance of reason,
when
he is to eat
salmon. But that is not the correct answer. His benefactor is not
reproaching him with treating himself to salmon precisely on the
day on which he borrowed the money; he is reminding him that in his
circumstances he has no right to think of such delicacies
at
all
. The impoverished
bon vivant
disregards this only
possible meaning of the reproach, and answers another question as
though he had misunderstood the reproach.

   Can it be that the technique of
this joke lies precisely in this diverting of the reply from the
meaning of the reproach? If so, a similar change of standpoint, a
similar shifting of the psychical emphasis, may perhaps be
traceable in the two earlier examples, which we felt were akin to
this one.

   And, lo and behold! this
suggestion is an easy success and in fact reveals the technique of
those examples. Soulié pointed out to Heine that society in
the nineteenth century worshipped the ‘Golden Calf’
just as did the Jews in the Wilderness. An appropriate answer by
Heine might have been ‘Yes, such is human nature; thousands
of years have made no change in it’ or something similar by
way of assent. But Heine diverted his answer from the thought
suggested to him and made no reply to it at all. He made use of the
double meaning of which the phrase ‘Golden Calf’ is
capable to branch off along a side-track. He caught hold of one
component of the phrase, ‘Calf’, and replied, as though
the emphasis in Soulié’s remark had been upon it:
‘Oh, he’s not a calf any
longer’ . . etc.¹

  
¹
Heine’s answer combines two
joke-techniques: a diversion combined with an allusion. He did not
say straight out: ‘He’s an ox.’

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1655

   The diversion in the bath-joke is
even plainer. This example calls for a graphic presentation:

   The first Jew asks: ‘Have
you taken a
bath
?’ The emphasis is on the element
‘bath’.

   The second replies as though the
question had been: ‘Have you
taken
a bath?’

   This shifting of the emphasis is
only made possible by the wording ‘taken a bath’. If it
had run ‘have you bathed?’ no displacement would have
been possible. The non-joking answer would then have been:
‘Bathed? What d’you mean? I don’t know what that
is.’ But the technique of the joke lies in the displacement
of the accent from ‘bath’ to
‘taken’.¹

   Let us go back to the
‘Salmon Mayonnaise’, since it is the most
straightforward example. What is new in it deserves our attention
in various directions. First we must give a name to the technique
brought to light in it. I propose to describe it as
‘displacement’, since its essence lies in the diversion
of the train of thought, the displacement of the psychical emphasis
on to a topic other than the opening one. Our next task is to
enquire into the relation between the technique of displacement and
the form of expression of the joke. Our example (‘Salmon
Mayonnaise’) shows us that a displacement joke is to a high
degree independent of verbal expression. It depends not on words
but on the train of thought. No replacement of the words will
enable us to get rid of it so long as the sense of the answer is
retained. Reduction is only possible if we change the train of
thought and make the gourmet reply directly to the reproach which
he has evaded in the version represented in the joke. The reduced
version would then run: ‘I can’t deny myself what
tastes good to me, and it’s a matter of indifference to me
where I get the money from to pay for it. There you have the
explanation of why I’m eating salmon mayonnaise on the very
day you’ve lent me the money.’ But that would not be a
joke; it would be a piece of cynicism.

  
¹
The word ‘take [
nehmen
]’
is very well adapted to form a basis for play upon words owing to
the variety of ways in which it can be used. I will give a plain
example, as a contrast to the displacement jokes reported above:
‘A well-known stock-exchange speculator and bank-director was
walking with a friend along the Ringstrasse. As they went past a
cafe he remarked: "Let’s go inside and take
something!" His friend held him back: "But, Herr Hofrat,
the place is full of people!" ‘

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1656

   It is instructive to compare this
joke with another that is very close to it in meaning:

   ‘A man who had taken to
drink supported himself by tutoring in a small town. His vice
gradually became known, however, and as a result he lost most of
his pupils. A friend was commissioned to urge him to mend his ways.
"Look, you could get the best tutoring in the town if you
would give up drinking. So do give it up!" "Who do you
think you are?" was the indignant reply. "I do tutoring
so that I can drink. Am I to give up drinking so that I can get
tutoring?"'

   This joke gives the same
appearance of being logical that we saw in the ‘Salmon
Mayonnaise’; but it is not a displacement joke. The reply was
a direct one. The cynicism which was concealed in the former joke
is openly admitted in this one: ‘Drinking is the most
important thing for me.’ Actually the technique of this joke
is extremely scanty and cannot explain its effectiveness. It
consists simply in the rearrangement of the same material or, more
precisely, in the reversal of the relation of means and ends
between drinking and doing or getting tutoring. As soon as my
reduction ceases to emphasize this factor in its form of
expression, the joke fades; for instance: ‘What a senseless
suggestion! The important thing for me is the drinking, not the
tutoring. After all, tutoring is only a means to enable me to go on
drinking.’ So the joke did in fact depend on its form of
expression.

   In the bath-joke the dependence
of the joke on its wording (‘Have you taken a bath?’)
is unmistakable, and a change in it involves the disappearance of
the joke. For in this case the technique is a more complicated one
- a combination of double meaning (sub-species
f
) and
displacement. The wording of the question admits a double meaning,
and the joke is produced by the answer disregarding the meaning
intended by the questioner and catching on to the subsidiary
meaning. We are accordingly in a position to find a reduction which
allows the double meaning of the wording to persist and yet
destroys the joke; we can do this merely by undoing the
displacement:

   ‘Have you taken a
bath?’ - ‘What do you think I’ve taken? A bath?
What’s that?’ But this is no longer a joke, but a
malicious or facetious exaggeration.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1657

   A precisely similar part is
played by the double meaning in Heine’s joke about the
‘Golden Calf’. It enables the answer to make a
diversion from the suggested train of thought (which is effected in
the ‘Salmon Mayonnaise’ joke without any such
assistance from the wording). In the reduction Souliés
remark and Heine’s reply would perhaps run: ‘The way in
which the people here are crowding round the man simply because
he’s rich reminds one vividly of the worship of the Golden
Calf.’ And Heine: ‘That he should be honoured in this
way because of his wealth doesn’t strike me as the worst of
it. In what you say you’re not putting enough stress on the
fact that because of his wealth people forgive him his
stupidity.’ In this way the double meaning would be retained
but the displacement joke would be destroyed.

   But at this point we must be
prepared to meet an objection which will assert that these fine
distinctions are seeking to tear apart what belongs together. Does
not every double meaning give occasion for a displacement - for a
diversion of the train of thought from one meaning to the other?
And are we prepared, then, to allow ‘double meaning’
and ‘displacement’ to be set up as representatives of
two quite different types of joke-technique? Well, it is true that
this relation between double meaning and displacement does exist,
but it has nothing to do with our distinguishing the different
joke-techniques. In the case of double meaning a joke contains
nothing other than a word capable of multiple interpretation, which
allows the hearer to find the transition from one thought to
another - a transition which, stretching a point, might be equated
with a displacement. In the case of a displacement joke, however,
the joke it self contains a train of thought in which a
displacement of this kind has been accomplished. Here the
displacement is part of the work which has created the joke; it is
not part of the work necessary for understanding it. If this
distinction is not clear to us, we have an unfailing means of
bringing it tangibly before our eyes in our attempts at reduction.
But there is one merit which we will not deny to this objection. It
draws our attention to the necessity of not confusing the psychical
processes involved in the
construction
of the joke (the
‘joke-work’) with the psychical processes involved in
taking in
the joke (the work of understanding). Our present
enquiry is only concerned with the former.¹