Freud - Complete Works (310 page)

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1757

   The abundant and unrestrained use
in the dream-work of indirect representation, of displacements, and
especially of allusions, has a result which I mention not for its
own importance but because it became my subjective reason for
taking up the problem of jokes. If one gives an account to an
uninformed or unaccustomed person of a dream-analysis, in which are
set out, therefore, the strange processes of allusions and
displacements - processes so obnoxious to waking life - of which
the dream-work has made use, the reader receives an uncomfortable
impression and declares that these interpretations are ‘in
the nature of a joke’. But he clearly does not regard them as
successful
jokes, but as forced, and in some way violating
the rules of jokes. It is easy to explain this impression. It
arises from the fact that the dream-work operates by the same
methods as jokes, but in its use of them it transgresses the limits
that are respected by jokes. We shall presently learn that, as a
result of the part played by the third person, jokes are bound by a
certain condition which does not apply to dreams.

   Among the techniques common to
jokes and dreams, representation by the opposite and the use of
nonsense claim some amount of our interest. The former is one of
the more effective methods employed in jokes, as may be seen among
others by the examples of ‘overstatement jokes’ (
p. 1670 f.
). Incidentally,
representation by the opposite is not able, like most other
joke-techniques, to escape conscious attention. A person who tries
to bring the joke-work into operation in himself as deliberately as
possible - a professional wag - soon discovers as a rule that the
easiest way of replying to an assertion by a joke is by asserting
its contrary and by leaving it to the inspiration of the moment to
get rid of the objection which his contradiction is likely to
provoke, by giving what he has said a fresh interpretation. It may
be that representation by the opposite owes the favour it enjoys to
the fact that it forms the core of another pleasurable way of
expressing a thought, which can be understood without any need for
bringing in the unconscious. I am thinking of
irony
, which
comes very close to joking and is counted among the sub-species of
the comic. Its essence lies in saying the opposite of what one
intends to convey to the other person, but in sparing him
contradiction by making him understand - by one’s tone of
voice, by some accompanying gesture, or (where writing is
concerned) by some small stylistic indications - that one means the
opposite of what one says. Irony can only be employed when the
other person is prepared to hear the opposite, so that he cannot
fail to feel an inclination to contradict. As a result of this
condition, irony is exposed particularly easily to the danger of
being misunderstood. It brings the person who uses it the advantage
of enabling him readily to evade the difficulties of direct
expression, for instance in invectives. It produces comic pleasure
in the hearer, probably because it stirs him into a contradictory
expenditure of energy which is at once recognized as being
unnecessary. A comparison like this between jokes and a closely
related type of the comic may confirm our assumption that what is
peculiar to jokes is their relation to the unconscious and that
this may perhaps distinguish them from the comic as well.¹

   In the dream-work, representation
by the opposite plays a far greater part even than in jokes. Dreams
are not merely fond of representing two contraries by one and the
same composite structure, but they so often change something in the
dream-thoughts into its opposite that this leads to a great
difficulty in the work of interpretation. ‘There is no way of
deciding at a first glance whether any element that admits of a
contrary is present in the dream-thoughts as a positive or as a
negative.’²

  
¹
The characteristic of the comic which is
described as its ‘dryness’ depends likewise on the
distinction between a statement and the gestures (in the widest
sense of the word) accompanying it.

  
²
The Interpretation of
Dreams.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1758

   I must state emphatically that
this fact has not up to now met with any recognition. But it seems
to point to an important characteristic of unconscious thinking, in
which in all probability no process that resembles
‘judging’ occurs. In the place of rejection by a
judgement, what we find in the unconscious is
‘repression’. Repression may, without doubt, be
correctly described as the intermediate stage between a defensive
reflex and a condemning judgement.¹

   Nonsense, absurdity, which
appears so often in dreams and has brought them into so much
undeserved contempt, never arises by chance through the ideational
elements being jumbled together, but can always be shown to have
been admitted by the dream-work intentionally and to be designed to
represent embittered criticism and contemptuous contradiction in
the dream-thoughts. Thus the absurdity in the content of the dream
takes the place of the judgement ‘this is a piece of
nonsense’ in the dream-thoughts. I laid great stress on the
evidence of this in my
Interpretation of Dreams
because I
thought that in this way I could make the most forcible attack on
the error of believing that the dream is not a psychical phenomenon
at all - an error which blocks the way to a knowledge of the
unconscious. We have now learned, in the course of solving certain
tendentious jokes (
p. 1660 ff.
),
that nonsense in jokes is made to serve the same aims of
representation. We know too that a senseless façade to a
joke is particularly well suited to increase the hearer’s
psychical expenditure and so to raise the quota liberated for
discharge by laughing. But besides this, it must not be forgotten
that the nonsense in a joke is an end in itself, since the
intention of recovering the old pleasure in nonsense is among the
joke-work’s motives. There are other ways of recovering the
nonsense and of deriving pleasure from it: caricature,
exaggeration, parody and travesty make use of them and so create
‘comic nonsense’. If we submit these forms of
expression to an analysis similar to the one we have applied to
jokes, we shall find that in none of these cases is there any
occasion for bringing in unconscious processes in our sense in
order to explain them. We can now understand too how it is that the
characteristic of being a joke can come as an extra addition to a
caricature, exaggeration or parody; what makes this possible is a
difference in the ‘psychical scene of
action’.²

  
¹
The highly remarkable and still
insufficiently appreciated behaviour of the relation between
contraries in the unconscious is no doubt likely to help our
understanding of ‘negativism’ in neurotic and insane
patients. (Cf. the two last works on the subject: Bleuler, 1904 and
Gross, 1904. [
Added
1912:] See also my review of ‘The
Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words’
(1910
e
).)

  
²
An expression used by Fechner which has
acquired importance as a support for my views.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1759

   The assignment of the joke-work
to the system of the unconscious has, I think, become of
considerably greater importance to us now that it has enabled us to
understand the fact that the techniques to which jokes admittedly
cling are, on the other hand, not their exclusive property. Some
doubts which we were obliged to hold over until later in our
original examination of these techniques now find a comfortable
solution. For that very reason another doubt that arises is all the
more deserving of our consideration. This suggests that the
undeniable relation of jokes to the unconscious is in fact only
valid for certain categories of tendentious jokes, whereas
we
are prepared to extend it to every species and every
developmental stage of jokes. We must not evade an examination of
this objection.

   It can be assumed with certainty
that jokes are formed in the unconscious when it is a question of
jokes in the service of unconscious purposes or of purposes
reinforced by the unconscious - that is, of most
‘cynical’ jokes. For in such cases the unconscious
purpose drags the preconscious thought down into the unconscious
and there gives it a new shape - a process to which the study of
the psychology of the neuroses has taught us numerous analogies. In
the case, however, of tendentious jokes of other kinds, of innocent
jokes and of jests, this downward dragging force seems absent and
the relation of jokes to the unconscious is accordingly called in
question.

   But let us now consider the case
in which a thought, not worthless in itself, arises in the course
of a train of thought and is expressed as a joke. In order to
enable this thought to be turned into a joke, it is clearly
necessary to select from among the possible forms of expression the
precise one which brings along with it a yield of verbal pleasure.
We know from self-observation that this selection is not made by
conscious attention; but it will certainly help the selection if
the cathexis of the preconscious thought is reduced to an
unconscious one, for, as we have learnt from the dream-work, the
connecting paths which start out from
words
are in the
unconscious treated in the same way as connections between
things
. An unconscious cathexis offers far more favourable
conditions for selecting the expression. Moreover, we can
immediately assume that the possible form of expression that
involves a yield of verbal pleasure exercises the same downward
drag on the still unsettled wording of the preconscious thought as
did the unconscious purpose in the earlier case. To meet the
simpler case of the jest, we may suppose that an intention which is
all the time on the look-out to achieve a yield of verbal pleasure
grasps the occasion offered in the preconscious for dragging the
cathectic process down into the unconscious according to the
familiar pattern.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1760

   I should be very glad if it were
possible for me on the one hand to give a clearer exposition of
this single decisive point in my view of jokes and on the other
hand to reinforce it with conclusive arguments. But in fact what I
am faced with here is not a two-fold failure but one and the same
failure. I cannot give a clearer exposition because I have no
further proof of my view. I arrived at it on the basis of a study
of the technique and of a comparison with the dream-work, and on no
other basis; and I then found that on the whole it fits in
excellently with the characteristics of jokes. Thus this view has
been arrived at by inference; and if from an inference of this kind
one is led, not to a familiar region, but on the contrary, to one
that is alien and new to one’s thought, one calls the
inference a ‘hypothesis’ and rightly refuses to regard
the relation of the hypothesis to the material from which it was
inferred as a ‘proof’ of it. It can only be regarded as
‘proved’ if it is reached by another path as well and
if it can be shown to be the nodal point of still other
connections. But proof of this sort is not to be had, in view of
the fact that our knowledge of unconscious processes has scarcely
begun. In the realization that we are standing upon ground which
has never before been trodden, we are thus content, from our point
of observation, to take one single, short and uncertain step
forward into the unexplored region.

   On such a foundation we cannot
build a great deal. If we bring the various stages of the joke into
relation to the mental states that are favourable to them we can
perhaps proceed as follows. The
jest
springs from a cheerful
mood, which seems to be characterized by an inclination to diminish
mental cathexes. It already employs all the characteristic
techniques of jokes and already fulfils their fundamental condition
by selecting verbal material or connections of thoughts which will
meet both the demands for a yield of pleasure and those made by
rational criticism. We shall conclude that the lowering of the
thought cathexis to the unconscious level, facilitated by the
cheerful mood, is present already in jests. In the case of
innocent jokes
that are linked to the expression of a
valuable thought, the encouraging effect of mood no longer applies.
Here we must presume the occurrence of a special
personal
aptitude
, which is manifested in the ease with which the
preconscious cathexis is dropped and exchanged for a moment for the
unconscious one. A purpose that is all the time on the watch for
renewing the original yield of pleasure from jokes exercises a
downward drag on the still unsettled preconscious expression of the
thought. No doubt most people are capable of producing jests when
they are in a cheerful mood; the aptitude for making
jokes
is present in only a few people independently of their mood.
Lastly, the joke-work receives its most powerful stimulus when
strong purposes reaching down into the unconscious are present,
which represent a special aptitude for the production of jokes and
which may explain to us how it is that the subjective determinants
of jokes are so often fulfilled in neurotic people. Under the
influence of strong purposes even those who otherwise have the
least aptitude for it become capable of making jokes.