Freud - Complete Works (291 page)

  
¹
For the latter, see later chapters of this
book. - A few further words of explanation are perhaps not
unnecessary here. Displacement habitually takes place between a
remark and a reply which pursues the train of thought in a
direction other than that in which it was started by the original
remark. The justification for distinguishing displacement from
double meaning is most convincingly shown by the examples in which
the two are combined - where, that is, the wording of the remark
admits of a double meaning which is not intended by the speaker,
but which points the way for the reply to make a displacement. (See
the examples.)

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1658

   Are there other examples of the
displacement technique? They are not easy to find. A
straightforward instance is afforded by the following joke, which
moreover is not characterized by the appearance of logic which was
so much overstressed in our model case:

   ‘A horse-dealer was
recommending a saddle-horse to a customer. "If you take this
horse and get on it at four in the morning you’ll be at
Pressburg by half-past six." - "What should I be doing in
Pressburg at half-past six in the morning?"'

   Here the displacement leaps to
the eye. The dealer obviously mentions the early hour of arriving
at the provincial town simply in order to demonstrate the
horse’s capacity by an example. The customer disregards the
animal’s capacity, which he does not question, and merely
enters into the data of the example that has been chosen. The
reduction of this joke is accordingly easy to give.

   Greater difficulties are
presented by another example the technique of which is most
obscure, but which can nevertheless be solved as double meaning
combined with displacement. The joke describes the prevarication of
a ‘
Schadchen
’ (a Jewish marriage-broker), and is
thus one of a group with which we shall often be concerned.

   ‘The
Schadchen
had
assured the suitor that the girl’s father was no longer
living. After the betrothal it emerged that the father was still
alive and was serving a prison sentence. The suitor protested to
the
Schadchen
, who replied: "Well, what did I tell you?
You surely don’t call that living?"'

   The double meaning lies in the
word ‘living’, and the displacement consists in the
Schadchen
shifting the meaning of the word from its ordinary
sense, as a contrast to ‘dead’, to the sense which it
has in the phrase ‘that’s not living’. In doing
so he explains his former pronouncement retrospectively as having
had a double meaning, though any such multiple meaning was
decidedly remote in this particular case. So far the technique
would seem similar to that in the ‘Golden Calf’ joke
and the bath-joke. But here there is another factor to be
considered which by its prominence interferes with our
understanding of the technique. It might be described as a
‘characterizing’ joke: it seeks by an example to
illustrate a marriage-broker’s characteristic mixture of
mendacious impudence and readiness of repartee. We shall find that
this is only the outer shell, the façade, of the joke; its
meaning - that is to say, its purpose - is something different. And
we must postpone the attempt at a reduction of it.¹

   After these complicated examples,
which have been so hard to analyse, it will be with satisfaction
that we are able to turn once more to an example which can be
recognized as a perfectly straightforward and transparent sample of
a displacement joke:

   ‘A
Schnorrer
[someone who is reluctant to part with his own money] approached a
wealthy baron with a request for the grant of some assistance for
his journey to Ostend. The doctors, he said, had recommended him
sea-bathing to restore his health. "Very well", said the
rich man, "I’II give you something towards it. But must
you go precisely to Ostend, which is the most expensive of all
sea-bathing resorts?" - "Herr Baron", was the
reproachful reply, "I consider nothing too expensive for my
health."' This is no doubt a correct point of view, but
not correct for a petitioner. The answer is given from the point of
view of a rich man. The
Schnorrer
behaves as though it was
his own money that he was to sacrifice for his health, as though
the money and the health were the concern of the same person.

  
¹
See Chapter III below.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1659

   Let us start once more from that
highly instructive example ‘Salmon Mayonnaise’. It,
too, presented us with a façade, in which a striking parade
of logical thinking was exhibited; and we learnt from analysing it
that this logic was used to conceal a piece of faulty reasoning -
namely, a displacement of the train of thought. This may serve to
remind us, if only by means of a contrasting connection, of other
jokes which, quite the other way, undisguisedly exhibit a piece of
nonsense or stupidity. We shall be curious to learn what may be the
technique of such jokes.

   I will begin with the most
forcible and at the same time the plainest example of the whole
group. Once again it is a Jewish joke:

   ‘Itzig had been declared
fit for service in the artillery. He was clearly an intelligent
lad, but intractable and without any interest in the service. One
of his superior officers, who was friendlily disposed to him, took
him on one side and said to him: "Itzig, you’re no use
to us. I’II give you a piece of advice: buy yourself a cannon
and make yourself independent!"'

   This advice, which may raise a
hearty laugh, is obvious nonsense. Cannons are not to be bought and
an individual cannot make himself independent as a military unit -
set himself up in business, as it were. But it is impossible to
doubt for a moment that the advice is not mere nonsense but joking
nonsense - an excellent joke. How then is the nonsense turned into
a joke?

   Not much reflection is needed. We
can infer from the authorities’ comments indicated above in
the introduction that there is sense behind joking nonsense such as
this, and that it is this sense that makes the nonsense into a
joke. The sense in our example is easy to find. The officer who
gives Artilleryman Itzig this nonsensical advice is only making
himself out stupid to show Itzig how stupidly he himself is be
having. He is copying Itzig: ‘I’II give you some advice
that’s as stupid as you are.’ He enters into
Itzig’s stupidity and makes it clear to him by taking it as
the basis of a suggestion which would fit in with Itzig’s
wishes: if Itzig possessed a cannon of his own and carried out
military duties on his own account, how useful his intelligence and
ambition would be to him! In what good order he would keep his
cannon and how familiar he would make himself with its mechanism so
as to meet the competition of the other possessors of cannons!

   I will interrupt the analysis of
this example, to point out the same sense in nonsense in a shorter
and simpler, though less glaring, case of a nonsensical joke:

   ‘Never to be born would be
the best thing for mortal men.’ ‘But’, adds the
philosophical comment in
Fliegende Blätter
, ‘this
happens to scarcely one person in a hundred thousand.’

   This modern addition to an
ancient saw is an evident piece of nonsense, made sillier by the
ostensibly cautious ‘scarcely’. But the addition is
attached to the original statement as an indisputably correct
limitation, and is thus able to open our eyes to the fact that this
solemnly accepted piece of wisdom is itself not much better than a
piece of nonsense. Anyone who is not born is not a mortal man at
all, and there is no good and no best for him. Thus the nonsense in
the joke serves to uncover and demonstrate another piece of
nonsense, just as in the example of Artilleryman Itzig.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1660

   And here I can add a third
instance, which, from its content, would scarcely deserve the
lengthy description that it requires, but which once again
exemplifies with special clarity the use of nonsense in a joke to
demonstrate another piece of nonsense.

   ‘A man who was obliged to
go on a journey confided his daughter to a friend with the request
that he should watch over her virtue during his absence. Some
months later he returned, and found that she was pregnant. As was
natural, he reproached his friend, who, however, seemed unable to
explain the misfortune. "Well", asked the father at last,
"where did she sleep?" - "In the room with my
son." - "But how could you let her sleep in the same room
as your son after I’d begged you so to look after her?"
- "After all there was a screen between them. Your
daughter’s bed was on one side and my son’s bed on the
other, with the screen between them." - "And suppose he
walked round the screen?" - "Yes, there is that",
replied the other thoughtfully; "it might have happened like
that."'

   We can arrive with the greatest
ease at the reduction of this joke, whose qualities have otherwise
little to recommend it. It would obviously run: ‘You have no
right to reproach me. How could you be so stupid as to leave your
daughter in a house where she is bound to live in the constant
company of a young man? How would it be possible for an outsider to
answer for a girl’s virtue in such circumstances?’
Here, then, the friend’s apparent stupidity is only a
reflection of the father’s stupidity. The reduction has
disposed of the stupidity in the joke and at the same time of the
joke itself. The element ‘stupidity’ itself has not
been got rid of: it is to be found at another point in the context
of the sentence after it has been reduced to its original
meaning.

   We can now attempt a reduction of
the joke about the cannon. The officer should have said:
‘Itzig, I know you’re an intelligent man of business.
But I assure you it is very stupid of you if you can’t see
that it is impossible to behave in the army in the same way as in
business life, where each person acts for himself and against the
others. In military life subordination and co-operation are the
rule.’

   The technique of the nonsensical
jokes which we have so far considered really consists, therefore,
in presenting something that is stupid and nonsensical, the sense
of which lies in the revelation and demonstration of something else
that is stupid and nonsensical.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1661

   Has this use of absurdity in joke
technique always the same significance? Here is one more example
which gives an affirmative reply:

   ‘When on one occasion
Phocion was applauded after making a speech, he turned to his
friends and asked: "What have I said that’s stupid,
then?"'

   The question sounds absurd. But
we see its meaning at once: ‘What have I said, then, that can
have pleased these stupid people so much? I ought to feel ashamed
of the applause. If what I said has pleased stupid people, it
cannot itself have been very sensible.’

   Other examples, however, can
teach us that absurdity is very often used in joke-technique
without serving the purpose of demonstrating another piece of
nonsense:

   ‘A well-known University
teacher, who was in the habit of peppering his unattractive special
subject with numerous jokes, was congratulated on the birth of his
youngest child, who was granted to him when he had already reached
an advanced age. "Yes", he replied to his well-wishers,
"it is remarkable what human hands can accomplish.’ -
This answer seems quite specially nonsensical and out of place.
Children, after all, are regarded as a blessing of God, quite in
contrast to human handiwork. But it soon occurs to us that after
all the answer has a meaning and, at that, an obscene one. There is
no question here of the happy father making himself out stupid in
order to show that something or someone else is stupid. The
apparently senseless answer makes a surprising, a bewildering
impression on us, as the authorities would say. As we have seen
they attribute the whole effect of jokes like this to an
alternation between ‘bewilderment and illumination’. We
shall try later to form a judgement on this; for the moment we must
be content to stress the fact that the technique of this joke lies
in its presentation of something bewildering and nonsensical.

   A joke of Lichtenberg’s
takes a quite special place among these ‘stupid’
jokes:

   ‘He wondered how it is that
cats have two holes cut in their skin precisely at the place where
their eyes are.’ To wonder about something that is in fact
only the statement of an identity is undoubtedly a piece of
stupidity. It reminds one of Michelet’s exclamation¹
which was meant to be taken seriously, and which to the best of my
recollection runs: ‘How beautifully Nature has arranged it
that as soon as a child comes into the world it finds a mother
ready to take care of it!’ Michelet’s pronouncement is
a real piece of stupidity, but Lichtenberg’s is a joke which
makes use of stupidity for some purpose and behind which something
lies. But what? For the moment, we must admit, no answer can be
given.

  
¹
La Femme

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1662

   We have now already found from
two groups of examples that the joke-work makes use of deviations
from normal thinking - of displacement and absurdity - as technical
methods for producing a joking form of expression. It is no doubt
justifiable to expect that other kinds of faulty reasoning may find
a similar use. And it is in fact possible to produce a few examples
of the sort: