Freud - Complete Works (301 page)

   On the basis of suitable
specimens of innocent jokes, in which there was no fear of our
judgement being disturbed by their content or purpose, we were
driven to conclude that the techniques of jokes are themselves
sources of pleasure; and we shall now try to discover whether it
may perhaps be possible to trace that pleasure back to economy in
psychical expenditure. In one group of these jokes (play upon
words) the technique consisted in focusing our psychical attitude
upon the
sound
of the word instead of upon its
meaning
- in making the (acoustic) word presentation itself
take the place of its significance as given by its relations to
thing-presentations. It may really be suspected that in doing so we
are bringing about a great relief in psychical work and that when
we make serious use of words we are obliged to hold ourselves back
with a certain effort from this comfortable procedure. We can
observe how pathological states of thought-activity, in which the
possibility of concentrating psychical expenditure on a particular
point is probably restricted, do in fact give this sort of
sound-presentation of the word greater prominence than its meaning,
and that sufferers in such states proceed in their speech on the
lines (as the formula runs) of the
‘external’ instead of the ‘internal’
associations of the word-presentation. We notice, too, that
children, who, as we know, are in the habit of still treating words
as things, tend to expect words that are the same or similar to
have the same meaning behind them - which is a source of many
mistakes that are laughed at by grown-up people. If, therefore, we
derive unmistakable enjoyment in jokes from being transported by
the use of the same or a similar word from one circle of ideas to
another, remote one (in the ‘Home-Roulard’, for
instance, from the kitchen to politics), this enjoyment is no doubt
correctly to be attributed to economy in psychical expenditure. The
pleasure in a joke arising from a ‘short-circuit’ like
this seems to be the greater the more alien the two circles of
ideas that are brought together by the same word - the further
apart they are, and thus the greater the economy which the
joke’s technical method provides in the train of thought. We
may notice, too, that here jokes are making use of a method of
linking things up which is rejected and studiously avoided by
serious thought.¹

   In a second group of technical
methods used in jokes - unification, similarity of sound, multiple
use, modification of familiar phrases, allusions to quotations - we
can single out as their common characteristic the fact that in each
of them something familiar is rediscovered, where we might instead
have expected something new. This rediscovery of what is familiar
is pleasurable, and once more it is not difficult for us to
recognize this pleasure as a pleasure in economy and to relate it
to economy in psychical expenditure.

  
¹
If I may be allowed to anticipate the
exposition in the text, I can at this point throw light on the
condition which seems to determine whether a joke is to be called a
‘good’ or a ‘bad’ one. If, by means of a
word with two meanings or a word that is only slightly modified, I
take a short cut from one circle of ideas to another, and if there
is not at the same time a link between those circles of ideas which
has a significant sense, then I shall have made a ‘bad’
joke. In a bad joke like this the only existing link between the
two disparate ideas is the one word - the ‘point’ of
the joke. The example of ‘Home-Roulard’ quoted above is
a joke of this kind. A ‘good’ joke, on the other hand,
comes about when what children expect proves correct and the
similarity between the words is shown to be really accompanied by
another, important similarity in their sense. Such, for instance,
is the example ‘Traduttore - Traditore’. The two
disparate ideas, which are here linked by an external association,
are also united in a significant relation which indicates an
essential kinship between them. The external association merely
takes the place of the internal connection; it serves to point it
out or make it clear. A ‘translator’ is not only called
by a similar name to a ‘traitor’; he actually in a kind
of traitor and bears the name, as it were by right.

   The
distinction that is here developed coincides with the one which is
to be introduced later between a ‘jest’ and a
‘joke’. But it would be unjust to exclude examples like
‘Home-Roulard’ from the discussion of the nature of
jokes. As soon as we take into consideration the peculiar pleasure
derived from jokes, we find that the ‘bad’ jokes are by
no means bad as jokes - that is, unsuitable for producing
pleasure.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1713

   It seems to be generally agreed
that the rediscovery of what is familiar,
‘recognition’, is pleasurable. Groos (1899, 153)
writes: ‘Recognition is always, unless it is too much
mechanized (as, for instance, in dressing, . . .),
linked with feelings of pleasure. The mere quality of familiarity
is easily accompanied by the quiet sense of comfort which Faust
felt when, after an uncanny encounter, he entered his study once
again . . . If the act of recognition thus gives
rise to pleasure, we might expect that men would hit on the idea of
exercising this capacity for its own sake - that is, would
experiment with it in play. And in fact Aristotle regarded joy in
recognition as the basis of the enjoyment of art, and it cannot be
disputed that this principle should not be overlooked, even if it
does not possess such far-reaching significance as Aristotle
attributes to it.’

   Groos goes on to discuss games
whose characteristic lies in the fact that they intensify the joy
in recognition by putting obstacles in its way - that is to say, by
creating a ‘psychical damming up’, which is got rid of
by the act of recognition. His attempt at an explanation, however,
abandons the hypothesis that recognition is pleasurable in itself,
since, by referring to these games, he is tracing back the
enjoyment of recognition to a joy in
power
, a joy in the
overcoming of a difficulty. I regard the latter factor as
secondary, and I see no reason to depart from the simpler view that
recognition is pleasurable in itself i.e., through relieving
psychical expenditure - and that the games founded on this pleasure
make use of the mechanism of damming up only in order to increase
the amount of such pleasure.

   It is also generally acknowledged
that rhymes, alliterations, refrains, and other forms of repeating
similar verbal sounds which occur in verse, make use of the same
source of pleasure - the rediscovery of something familiar. The
‘sense of power’ plays no perceptible part in these
techniques, which show so much similarity to that of
‘multiple use’ in the case of jokes.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1714

   In view of the close connection
between recognizing and remembering, it is not rash to suppose that
there may also be a pleasure in remembering - that the act of
remembering is in itself accompanied by a feeling of pleasure of
similar origin. Groos seems not to be averse to such a hypothesis,
but he derives it once again from the ‘sense of power’,
to which he attributes (wrongly, in my view) the chief reason for
enjoyment in almost all games.

   The ‘rediscovery of what is
familiar’ is the basis for the use of another technical
resource in jokes, which we have not yet mentioned. I refer to the
factor of ‘topicality’, which is a fertile source of
pleasure in a great many jokes and which explains a few of the
peculiarities in the life-history of jokes. There are jokes which
are completely independent of this condition, and in a monograph on
jokes we are obliged to make almost exclusive use of examples of
that kind. But we cannot forget that, in comparison with these
perennial jokes, we have perhaps laughed even more heartily at
others which it is difficult for us to use now because they would
call for long commentaries and even with such help would not
produce their original effect. These latter jokes contained
allusions to people and events which at the time were
‘topical’, which had aroused general interest and still
kept it alive. When this interest had ceased and the business in
question had been settled, these jokes too lost a part of their
pleasurable effect and indeed a very considerable part. For
instance, the joke made by my friendly host when he called a
pudding that was being served a ‘Home-Roulard’ does not
seem to me to-day nearly so good as it did at the time when
‘Home Rule’ provided a standing head-line in the
political columns of our daily papers. In attempting to estimate
the merits of this joke I now attribute them to the fact that a
single word has transported us, with the economy of a long detour
in thought, from the circle of ideas of the kitchen to the remote
one of politics. But at the time my account would have had to be
different, and I should have said that this word transported us
from the circle of ideas of the kitchen to that of politics, which
was remote from it but was certain of our lively interest because
we were constantly concerned with it. Another joke, ‘This
girl reminds me of Dreyfus; the army doesn’t believe in her
innocence’, has also faded to-day, though its technical
methods must have remained unaltered. The bewilderment caused by
the comparison and the
double-entendre
in the word
‘innocence’ cannot compensate for the fact that the
allusion, which at the time touched on an event cathected with
fresh excitement, to-day recalls a question that is settled. Here
is a joke which is still topical: ‘The Crown Princess Louise
approached the crematorium in Gotha with the question of how much a
Verbrennung
[cremation] costs. The management replied:
"Five thousand marks normally; but we will only charge
you
three thousand as you have been
durchgebrannt
[literally ‘been burnt through’ - slang for
‘eloped’] once already.’ A joke like this sounds
irresistible to-day; in a short time it will have sunk very
considerably in our estimation; and some time later still, in spite
of its good play upon words, it will lose its effect entirely, for
it will be impossible to repeat it without adding a commentary to
explain who Princess Louise was and the sense in which she was
durchgebrannt
.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1715

   Thus a great number of the jokes
in circulation have a certain length of life: their life runs a
course made up of a period of flowering and a period of decay and
it ends in complete oblivion. The need which men feel for deriving
pleasure from their processes of thought is therefore constantly
creating new jokes based on the new interests of the day. The vital
force of topical jokes is not their own; it is borrowed, by the
method of allusion, from those other interests, the expiry of which
determines the fate of the joke as well. The factor of topicality
is a source of pleasure, ephemeral it is true but particularly
abundant, which supplements the sources inherent in the joke
itself. It cannot be simply equated with the rediscovery of what is
familiar. It is concerned rather with a particular category of what
is familiar, which must in addition possess the characteristic of
being fresh, recent and untouched by forgetting. In the formation
of dreams, too, we come across a special preference for what is
recent and we cannot escape a suspicion that association with what
is recent is rewarded, and so facilitated, by a peculiar bonus of
pleasure.

   Unification, which is after all
no more than repetition in the sphere of thought-connections
instead of in that of subject-matter, was given special recognition
by Fechner as a source of the pleasure in jokes. He writes
(Fechner, 1897, 1, Chapter XVII): ‘In my opinion the chief
part in the field we are now considering is played by the principle
of the unified linking of multiplicities; it requires support,
however, from auxiliary determinants in order that the enjoyment
which can be derived from these cases, with its peculiar character,
may be carried over the threshold.’¹

   In all these cases of repeating
the same connections or the same subject-matter in the words, or of
rediscovering what is familiar or recent, it seems impossible to
avoid deriving the pleasure felt in them from economy in psychical
expenditure provided that this line of approach turns out to be
fruitful in throwing light on details and in arriving at new
generalities. We are aware that we have still to make it clear how
the economy comes about and what the meaning is of the
expression ‘psychical expenditure’.

   The third group of techniques of
jokes - for the most part of conceptual jokes - which comprises
faulty thinking, displacements, absurdity, representation by the
opposite, etc., may at a first glance seem to bear a special
impress and to betray no kinship with the techniques of rediscovery
of what is familiar or the replacement of object-associations by
word-associations. Nevertheless it is particularly easy here to
bring into play the theory of economy or relief in psychical
expenditure.

  
¹
The title of Chapter XVII is ‘On
significant and joking similes, play upon words and other cases
which bear the character of being amusing, funny or
ridiculous.’

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1716

   It cannot be doubted that it is
easier and more convenient to diverge from a line of thought we
have embarked on than to keep to it, to jumble up things that are
different rather than to contrast them - and, indeed, that it is
specially
convenient to admit as valid methods of inference
that are rejected by logic and, lastly, to put words or thoughts
together without regard to the condition that they ought also to
make sense. This cannot be doubted; and these are precisely the
things that are done by the joke-techniques which we are
discussing. But the hypothesis that behaviour of this kind by the
joke-work provides a source of pleasure will strike us as strange,
since apart from jokes all such inefficient intellectual
functioning produces in us nothing but unpleasurable defensive
feelings.