Freud - Complete Works (299 page)

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1701

   Let us recall, too, what we
observed while we were investigating the technique of jokes: that
in jokes nonsense often replaces ridicule and criticism in the
thoughts lying behind the joke. (In this respect, incidentally, the
joke-work is doing the same thing as the dream-work.) Here we find
the fact confirmed once again. That the ridicule and criticism are
not directed against the figure of the broker, who only appears in
the examples we have quoted as a whipping-boy, is shown by another
class of jokes in which the marriage-broker is represented, on the
contrary, as a superior person, whose dialectical powers prove
sufficient to meet any difficulty. They are anecdotes with a
logical instead of a comic façade - sophistical conceptual
jokes. In one of them (
p. 1664 f.
) the broker succeeds in
arguing away the bride’s defect of being lame. It is at least
a ‘
fait accompli
’; another wife, with straight
limbs, would on the contrary be in constant danger of falling down
and breaking her leg, and this would be followed by illness, pains,
and the expenses of treatment, all of which would be spared in the
case of the woman who is lame already. Or there is another
anecdote, in which he succeeds in repelling a whole series of
complaints made by the suitor against the bride, meeting each one
with good arguments till he replies to the last, which cannot be
countered: ‘What
do
you want? Isn’t she to have
a single fault?’, as though there were not necessarily
something left over from the earlier objections. There is no
difficulty in showing the weak spot in the argument in these two
examples, and we did so in examining their technique. But what
interests us now is something different. If the broker’s
speech is given such a marked appearance of logic which, on careful
examination, is recognizable as being only an appearance, the truth
behind it is that the joke declares the broker to be in the right;
the thought does not venture to do so seriously but replaces the
seriousness by the appearance which the joke presents. But here, as
so often, a jest betrays something serious. We shall not be
mistaken if we assume of all these anecdotes with a logical
façade that they really mean what they assert for reasons
that are intentionally faulty. It is only this employment of
sophistry for the disguised representation of the truth that gives
it the character of a joke, which is thus essentially dependent on
its purpose. For what is hinted at in the two anecdotes is that it
is really the suitor who is making himself ridiculous when he
collects the bride’s different advantages together with so
much care, though all of them are weak, and when, in doing so, he
forgets that he must be prepared to take as his wife a human being
with her inevitable defects; while, on the other hand, the one
characteristic that would make marriage with the woman’s more
or less imperfect personality tolerable - mutual attraction and
readiness for affectionate adaptation - is quite left out of
account in the whole transaction.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1702

   The mockery directed at the
suitor in these examples, in which the broker quite appropriately
plays the part of a superior, is expressed much more plainly in
other anecdotes. The plainer these stories are, the less
joke-technique do they contain; they are, as it were, only marginal
cases of jokes, with the technique of which they no longer have
anything in common but the construction of a façade. But
owing to their having the same purpose and to its being concealed
behind the facade, they produce the complete effect of a joke.
Moreover, the poverty of their technical methods explains how it is
that many of these jokes cannot, without suffering damage, dispense
with the element of dialect, which has an effect similar to the
joke technique.

   A story of this sort, which,
while possessing all the force of a tendentious joke, exhibits
nothing of its technique, is the following: ‘The
marriage-broker asked: "What do you require of your
bride?" - Answer: "She must be beautiful, she must be
rich, and educated." - "Very good", said the broker,
"but I count that as making three matches."' Here the
rebuke to the man is delivered openly, and is no longer clothed as
a joke.

   In the examples we have
considered hitherto, the disguised aggressiveness has been directed
against
people
- in the broker jokes against everyone
involved in the business of arranging a marriage: the bride and
bridegroom and their parents. But the object of the joke’s
attack may equally well be institutions, people in their capacity
as vehicles of institutions, dogmas of morality or religion, views
of life which enjoy so much respect that objections to them can
only be made under the mask of a joke and indeed of a joke
concealed by its façade. Though the themes at which these
tendentious jokes are aimed may be few, their forms and envelopes
are very many and various. I think we shall do well to distinguish
this class of tendentious joke by a special name. The appropriate
name will emerge after we have interpreted a few examples of the
class.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1703

   I may recall the two stories -
one of the impoverished
gourmet
who was caught eating
‘salmon mayonnaise’ and the other of the dipsomaniac
tutor - which we learnt to know as sophistical displacement jokes.
I will now continue their interpretation. We have since heard that
if an appearance of logic is tacked on to the façade of a
story the thought would like to say seriously ‘the man is
right’, but, owing to an opposing contradiction, does not
venture to declare the man right except on a single point, on which
it can easily be shown that he is
wrong
. The
‘point’ chosen is the correct compromise between his
rightness and his wrongness; this, indeed, is no decision, but
corresponds to the conflict within ourselves. The two anecdotes are
simply epicurean. They say: ‘Yes. The man is right. There is
nothing higher than enjoyment and it is more or less a matter of
indifference how one obtains it.’ This sounds shockingly
immoral and is no doubt not much better. But at bottom it is
nothing other than the poet’s ‘
Carpe
diem
’, which appeals to the uncertainty of life and the
unfruitfulness of virtuous renunciation. If the idea that the man
in the ‘salmon mayonnaise’ joke was right has such a
repellent effect on us, this is only because the truth is
illustrated by an enjoyment of the lowest kind, which it seems to
us we could easily do without. In reality each of us has had hours
and times at which he has admitted the rightness of this philosophy
of life and has reproached moral doctrine with only understanding
how to demand without offering any compensation. Since we have
ceased any longer to believe in the promise of a next world in
which every renunciation will be rewarded by a satisfaction - there
are, incidentally, very few pious people if we take renunciation as
the sign of faith - ‘
Carpe diem
’ has become a
serious warning. I will gladly put off satisfaction: but do I know
whether I shall still be here tomorrow? ‘
Di doman’
non c’è certezza
.’¹

  
¹
[‘There is no certainty about
tomorrow.’] Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1704

   I will gladly renounce all the
methods of satisfaction proscribed by society, but am I certain
that society will reward this renunciation by offering me one of
the permitted methods - even after a certain amount of
postponement? What these jokes whisper may be said aloud: that the
wishes and desires of men have a right to make themselves
acceptable alongside of exacting and ruthless morality. And in our
days it has been said in forceful and stirring sentences that this
morality is only a selfish regulation laid down by the few who are
rich and powerful and who can satisfy their wishes at any time
without any postponement. So long as the art of healing has not
gone further in making our life safe and so long as social
arrangements do no more to make it more enjoyable, so long will it
be impossible to stifle the voice within us that rebels against the
demands of morality. Every honest man will end by making this
admission, at least to himself. The decision in this conflict can
only be reached by the roundabout path of fresh insight. One must
bind one’s own life to that of others so closely and be able
to identify oneself with others so intimately that the brevity of
one’s own life can be overcome; and one must not fulfil the
demands of one’s own needs illegitimately, but must leave
them unfulfilled, because only the continuance of so many
unfulfilled demands can develop the power to change the order of
society. But not every personal need can be postponed in this way
and transferred to other people, and there is no general and final
solution of the conflict.

   We now know the name that must be
given to jokes like those that we have last interpreted. They are
cynical
jokes and what they disguise are cynicisms.

   Among the institutions which
cynical jokes are in the habit of attacking none is more important
or more strictly guarded by moral regulations but at the same time
more inviting to attack than the institution of marriage, at which,
accordingly, the majority of cynical jokes are aimed. There is no
more personal claim than that for sexual freedom and at no point
has civilization tried to exercise severer suppression than in the
sphere of sexuality. A single example will be enough for our
purposes - the one mentioned on
p. 1678
, ‘An Entry in Prince
Carnival’s Album’:

   ‘A wife is like an umbrella
- sooner or later one takes a cab.’

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1705

   We have already discussed the
complicated technique of this example: a bewildering and apparently
impossible simile, which however, as we now see, is not in itself a
joke; further, an allusion (a cab is a public vehicle); and, as its
most powerful technical method, an omission which increases the
unintelligibility. The simile may be worked out as follows. One
marries in order to protect oneself against the temptations of
sensuality, but it turns out nevertheless that marriage does not
allow of the satisfaction of needs that are somewhat stronger than
usual. In just the same way, one takes an umbrella with one to
protect oneself from the rain and nevertheless gets wet in the
rain. In both cases one must look around for a stronger protection:
in the latter case one must take a public vehicle, and in the
former a woman who is accessible in return for money. The joke has
now been almost entirely replaced by a piece of cynicism. One does
not venture to declare aloud and openly that marriage is not an
arrangement calculated to satisfy a man’s sexuality, unless
one is driven to do so perhaps by the love of truth and eagerness
for reform of a Christian von Ehrenfels.¹ The strength of this
joke lies in the fact that nevertheless - in all kinds of
roundabout ways - it
has
declared it.

   A particularly favourable
occasion for tendentious jokes is presented when the intended
rebellious criticism is directed against the subject himself, or,
to put it more cautiously, against someone in whom the subject has
a share - a collective person, that is (the subject’s own
nation, for instance). The occurrence of self-criticism as a
determinant may explain how it is that a number of the most apt
jokes (of which we have given plenty of instances) have grown up on
the soil of Jewish popular life. They are stories created by Jews
and directed against Jewish characteristics. The jokes made about
Jews by foreigners are for the most part brutal comic stories in
which a joke is made unnecessary by the fact that Jews are regarded
by foreigners as comic figures. The Jewish jokes which originate
from Jews admit this too; but they know their real faults as well
as the connection between them and their good qualities, and the
share which the subject has in the person found fault with creates
the subjective determinant (usually so hard to arrive at) of the
joke-work. Incidentally, I do not know whether there are many other
instances of a people making fun to such a degree of its own
character.

  
¹
See his essays (1903).

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1706

   As an example of this I may take
the anecdote, quoted on
p. 1679 f.
, of a Jew in a railway
train promptly abandoning all decent behaviour when he discovered
that the newcomer into his compartment was a fellow-believer. We
made the acquaintance of this anecdote as evidence of something
being demonstrated by a detail, of representation by something very
small. It is meant to portray the democratic mode of thinking of
Jews, which recognizes no distinction between lords and serfs, but
also, alas, upsets discipline and co-operation.

   Another, especially interesting
group of jokes portrays the relation of poor and rich Jews to one
another. Their heroes are the ‘
Schnorrer
' and the
charitable householder or the Baron.

   ‘A
Schnorrer
, who
was allowed as a guest into the same house every Sunday, appeared
one day in the company of an unknown young man who gave signs of
being about to sit down to table. "Who is this?" asked
the householder. "He’s been my son-in law", was the
reply, "since last week. I’ve promised him his board for
the first year."'