Freud - Complete Works (302 page)

   ‘Pleasure in
nonsense’, as we may call it for short, is concealed in
serious life to a vanishing point. In order to demonstrate it we
must investigate two cases - one in which it is still visible and
one in which it becomes visible again: the behaviour of a child in
learning, and that of an adult in a toxically altered state of
mind.

   During the period in which a
child is learning how to handle the vocabulary of his
mother-tongue, it gives him obvious pleasure to ‘experiment
with it in play’, to use Groos’s words. And he puts
words together without regard to the condition that they should
make sense, in order to obtain from them the pleasurable effect of
rhythm or rhyme. Little by little he is forbidden this enjoyment,
till all that remains permitted to him are significant combinations
of words. But when he is older attempts still emerge at
disregarding the restrictions that have been learnt on the use of
words. Words are disfigured by particular little additions being
made to them, their forms are altered by certain manipulations
(e.g. by reduplications or ‘
Zittersprache
’), or
a private language may even be constructed for use among playmates.
These attempts are found again among certain categories of mental
patients.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1717

   Whatever the motive may have been
which led the child to begin these games, I believe that in his
later development he gives himself up to them with the
consciousness that they are nonsensical, and that he finds
enjoyment in the attraction of what is forbidden by reason. He now
uses games in order to withdraw from the pressure of critical
reason. But there is far more potency in the restrictions which
must establish themselves in the course of a child’s
education in logical thinking and in distinguishing between what is
true and false in reality; and for this reason the rebellion
against the compulsion of logic and reality is deep-going and
long-lasting. Even the phenomena of imaginative activity must be
included in this category. The power of criticism has increased so
greatly in the later part of childhood and in the period of
learning which extends over puberty that the pleasure in
‘liberated nonsense’ only seldom dares to show itself
directly. One does not venture to say anything absurd. But the
characteristic tendency of boys to do absurd or silly things seems
to me to be directly derived from the pleasure in nonsense. In
pathological cases we often see this tendency so far intensified
that once more it dominates the schoolboy’s talk and answers.
I have been able to convince myself in the case of a few boys of
secondary school age who had developed neuroses that the
unconscious workings of their pleasure in the nonsense they
produced played no less a part in their inefficiency than did their
real ignorance.

   Nor, later on, does the
University student cease these demonstrations against the
compulsion of logic and reality, the dominance of which, however,
he feels growing ever more intolerant and unrestricted. A large
amount of student ‘rags’ are a part of this reaction.
For man is a ‘tireless pleasure-seeker’ - I forget
where I came across this happy expression - and any renunciation of
a pleasure he has once enjoyed comes hard to him. With the cheerful
nonsense of his
Bierschwefel
,¹ for instance, the
student tries to rescue his pleasure in freedom of thinking, of
which he is being more and more deprived by the schooling of
academic instruction. Much later still, indeed, when as a grown man
he meets others in scientific congresses and once more feels
himself a learner, after the meeting is over there comes the
Kneipzeitung
,² which distorts the new discoveries into
nonsense, and offers him a compensation for the fresh addition to
his intellectual inhibition.

  
¹
[‘
Bierschwefel
’:
ludicrous speech delivered at a beer party.]

  
²
[A comic set of minutes. Literally,
‘tavern newspaper’.]

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1718

   The
Bierschwefel
and the
Kneipzeitung
give evidence by their names to the fact that
the criticism which has repressed pleasure in nonsense has already
grown so powerful that it cannot be put aside even temporarily
without toxic assistance. A change in mood is the most precious
thing that alcohol achieves for mankind, and on that account this
‘poison’ is not equally indispensable for everyone. A
cheerful mood, whether it is produced endogenously or toxically,
reduces the inhibiting forces, criticism among them, and makes
accessible once again sources of pleasure which were under the
weight of suppression. It is most instructive to observe how the
standards of joking sink as spirits rise. For high spirits replace
jokes, just as jokes must try to replace high spirits, in which
possibilities of enjoyment which are otherwise inhibited - among
them the pleasure in nonsense - can come into their own: ‘Mit
wenig Witz und viel Behagen.’¹ Under the influence of
alcohol the grown man once more becomes a child, who finds pleasure
in having the course of his thoughts freely at his disposal without
paying regard to the compulsion of logic.

   I hope I have now also shown that
the absurdity-techniques of jokes are a source of pleasure. It need
only be repeated that this pleasure arises from an economy in
psychical expenditure or a relief from the compulsion of
criticism.

   If we look back once more at the
three separate groups of joke-techniques, we see that the first and
third of these groups - the replacement of thing-associations by
word-associations and the use of absurdity - can be brought
together as re-establishing old liberties and getting rid of the
burden of intellectual upbringing; they are psychical reliefs,
which can in a sense be contrasted with the economizing which
constitutes the technique of the second group. Relief from
psychical expenditure that is already there and economizing in
psychical expenditure that is only about to be called for - from
these two principles all the techniques of jokes, and accordingly
all pleasure from these techniques, are derived. The two species of
technique and of obtaining pleasure coincide - in the main at all
events - with the distinction between verbal and conceptual
jokes.

  
¹
[‘With little wit and much
enjoyment.’]

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1719

   The preceding discussion has
given us unawares an insight into the evolution or psychogenesis of
jokes, which we will now examine more closely. We have made the
acquaintance of preliminary stages of jokes, and their development
into tendentious jokes will probably uncover fresh relations
between the various characteristics of jokes. Before there is such
a thing as a joke, there is something that we may describe as
‘play’ or as ‘a jest’.

   Play - let us keep to that name -
appears in children while they are learning to make use of words
and to put thoughts together. This play probably obeys one of the
instincts which compel children to practise their capacities
(Groos). In doing so they come across pleasurable effects, which
arise from a repetition of what is similar, a rediscovery of what
is familiar, similarity of sound, etc., and which are to be
explained as unsuspected economies in psychical expenditure. It is
not to be wondered at that these pleasurable effects encourage
children in the pursuit of play and cause them to continue it
without regard for the meaning of words or the coherence of
sentences.
Play
with words and thoughts, motivated by
certain pleasurable effects of economy, would thus be the first
stage of jokes.

   This play is brought to an end by
the strengthening of a factor that deserves to be described as the
critical faculty or reasonableness. The play is now rejected as
being meaningless or actually absurd; as a result of criticism it
becomes impossible. Now, too, there is no longer any question of
deriving pleasure, except accidentally, from the sources of
rediscovery of what is familiar, etc., unless it happens that the
growing individual is overtaken by a pleasurable mood which, like
the child’s cheerfulness, lifts the critical inhibition. Only
in such a case does the old game of getting pleasure become
possible once more; but the individual does not want to wait for
this to happen nor to renounce the pleasure that is familiar to
him. He thus looks about for means of making himself independent of
the pleasurable mood, and the further development towards jokes is
governed by the two endeavours: to avoid criticism and to find a
substitute for the mood.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

 
1720

   And with this the second
preliminary stage of jokes sets in - the
jest
. It is now a
question of prolonging the yield of pleasure from play, but at the
same time of silencing the objections raised by criticism which
would not allow the pleasurable feeling to emerge. There is only
one way of reaching this end: the meaningless combination of words
or the absurd putting together of thoughts must nevertheless have a
meaning. The whole ingenuity of the joke-work is summoned up in
order to find words and aggregations of thoughts in which this
condition is fulfilled. All the technical methods of jokes are
already employed here - in jests; moreover linguistic usage draws
no consistent line between a jest and a joke. What distinguishes a
jest from a joke is that the meaning of the sentence which escapes
criticism need not be valuable or new or even good; it need merely
be
permissible
to say the thing in this way, even though it
is unusual, unnecessary or useless to say it in this way. In jests
what stands in the foreground is the satisfaction of having made
possible what was forbidden by criticism.

   It is, for instance, simply a
jest when Schleiermacher defines
Eifersucht
[jealousy] as
the
Leidenschaft
[passion] which
mit eifer Sucht
[with eagerness seeks] what
Leiden schafft
[causes pain]. It
was a jest when Professor Kästner, who taught physics (and
made jokes) at Göttingen in the eighteenth century, asked a
student named Kriegk, when he was enrolling himself for his
lectures, how old he was. ‘Thirty years old’ was the
reply, whereupon Kästner remarked: ‘Ah! so I have the
honour of meeting the Thirty Years’ War
[
Krieg
].’ (Kleinpaul, 1890.) It was with a jest that
the great Rokitansky replied to the question of what were the
professions of his four sons: ‘Two
heilen
[heal] and
two
heulen
[howl]’ (two doctors and two singers). The
information was correct and therefore not open to criticism; but it
added nothing to what might have been expressed in the words in
brackets. There can be no mistaking the fact that the answer was
given the other form only on account of the pleasure which was
produced by the unification and the similar sound of the two
words.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1721

   I think now at length we see our
way clearly. All through our consideration of the techniques of
jokes we have been disturbed by the fact that they were not proper
to jokes only; and yet the essence of jokes seemed to depend on
them, since when they were got rid of by reduction the
characteristics and the pleasure of the joke were lost. We now see
that what we have described as the techniques of jokes - and we
must in a certain sense continue to describe them so - are rather
the sources from which jokes provide pleasure; and we feel that
there is nothing strange in other procedures drawing from the same
sources for the same end. The technique which is characteristic of
jokes and peculiar to them, however, consists in their procedure
for safeguarding the use of these methods of providing pleasure
against the objections raised by criticism which would put an end
to the pleasure. There is little that we can say in general about
this procedure. The joke-work, as we have already remarked, shows
itself in a choice of verbal material and conceptual situations
which will allow the old play with words and thoughts to withstand
the scrutiny of criticism; and with that end in view every
peculiarity of vocabulary and every combination of
thought-sequences must be exploited in the most ingenious possible
way. We may be in a position later to characterize the joke-work by
a particular property; for the moment it remains unexplained how
the selection favourable for jokes can be made. The purpose and
function of jokes, however - namely, the protection of sequences of
words and thoughts from criticism - can already be seen in jests as
their essential feature. Their function consists from the first in
lifting internal inhibitions and in making sources of pleasure
fertile which have been rendered inaccessible by those inhibitions;
and we shall find that they remain loyal to this characteristic
throughout their development.

   We are also in a position now to
assign its correct place to the factor of ‘sense in
nonsense’ (cf. the introduction,
p. 1618
), to which the authorities
attribute such great importance as a distinguishing mark of jokes
and as an explanation of their pleasurable effect. The two fixed
points in what determines the nature of jokes - their purpose of
continuing pleasurable play and their effort to protect it from the
criticism of reason immediately explain why an individual joke,
though it may seem senseless from one point of view, must appear
sensible, or at least allowable, from another. How it does so
remains the affair of the joke-work; if it fails to do so, it is
simply rejected as ‘nonsense’. But there is no
necessity for us to derive the pleasurable effect of jokes from the
conflict between the feelings which arise (whether directly or
along the path of ‘bewilderment and enlightenment’)
from the simultaneous sense and nonsense of jokes. Nor have we any
need to enter further into the question of how pleasure could arise
from the alternation between ‘thinking it senseless’
and ‘recognizing it as sensible’. The psychogenesis of
jokes has taught us that the pleasure in a joke is derived from
play with words or from the liberation of nonsense, and that the
meaning of the joke is merely intended to protect that pleasure
from being done away with by criticism.