Freud - Complete Works (314 page)

   As regards making
other
people
comic, the principal means is to put them in situations
in which a person becomes comic as a result of human dependence on
external events, particularly on social factors, without regard to
the personal characteristics of the individual concerned - that is
to say, by employing the comic of situation. This putting of
someone in a comic situation may be a
real
one (a practical
joke¹) - by sticking out a leg so that someone trips over it
as though he were clumsy, by making him seem stupid by exploiting
his credulity, or trying to convince him of something nonsensical,
and so on - or it may be simulated by speech or play. The
aggressiveness, to which making a person comic usually ministers,
is much assisted by the fact that the comic pleasure is independent
of the reality of the comic situation, so that everyone is in fact
exposed, without any defence, to being made comic.

  
¹
[In English in the original.]

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1779

   But there are yet other means of
making things comic which deserve special consideration and also
indicate in part fresh sources of comic pleasure. Among these, for
instance, is
mimicry
, which gives quite extraordinary
pleasure to the hearer and makes its object comic even if it is
still far from the exaggeration of a caricature. It is much easier
to find a reason for the comic effect of
caricature
than for
that of mere mimicry. Caricature, parody and travesty (as well as
their practical counterpart, unmasking) are directed against people
and objects which lay claim to authority and respect, which are in
some sense ‘
sublime
’. They are procedures for
Herabsetzung
, as the apt German expression has it.¹
What is sublime is something large in the figurative, psychical
sense; and I should like to suggest, or rather to repeat my
suggestion, that, like what is somatically large, it is represented
by an increased expenditure. It requires little observation to
establish that when I speak of something sublime I innervate my
speech in a different way, I make different facial expressions, and
I try to bring the whole way in which I hold myself into harmony
with the dignity of what I am having an idea of. I impose a solemn
restraint upon myself - not very different from what I should adopt
if I were to enter the presence of an exalted personality, a
monarch, or a prince of science. I shall hardly be wrong in
assuming that this different innervation in my ideational mimetics
corresponds to an increased expenditure. The third instance of an
increased expenditure of this kind is no doubt to be found when I
proceed in abstract trains of thought instead of in the habitual
concrete and plastic ones. When, therefore, the procedures that I
have discussed for the degradation of the sublime allow me to have
an idea of it as though it were something commonplace, in whose
presence I need not pull myself together but may, to use the
military formula, ‘stand easy’, I am being spared the
increased expenditure of the solemn restraint; and the comparison
between this new ideational method (instigated by empathy) and the
previously habitual one, which is simultaneously trying to
establish itself - this comparison once again creates the
difference in expenditure which can be discharged by laughter.

  
¹
‘Degradation’ [in English in
the original]. Bain (1865, 248) writes: ‘The occasion of the
Ludicrous is the Degradation of some person or interest, possessing
dignity, in circumstances that excite no other strong
emotion.’

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1780

  
Caricature
, as is well
known, brings about degradation by emphasizing in the general
impression given by the exalted object a single trait which is
comic in itself but was bound to be overlooked so long as it was
only perceivable in the general picture. By isolating this, a comic
effect can be attained which extends in our memory over the whole
object. This is subject to the condition that the actual presence
of the exalted object himself does not keep us in a reverential
attitude. If a comic trait of this kind that has been overlooked is
lacking in reality, a caricature will unhesitatingly create it by
exaggerating one that is not comic in itself; and the fact that the
effect of the caricature is not essentially diminished by this
falsification of reality is once again an indication of the origin
of comic pleasure.

  
Parody
and
travesty
achieve the degradation of something exalted in another way: by
destroying the unity that exists between people’s characters
as we know them and their speeches and actions, by replacing either
the exalted figures or their utterances by inferior ones. They are
distinguished from caricature in this, but not in the mechanism of
their production of comic pleasure. The same mechanism is also used
for
unmasking
, which only applies where someone has seized
dignity and authority by a deception and these have to be taken
from him in reality. We have already met with a few examples of the
comic effect of unmasking in jokes - for instance, in the story of
the aristocratic lady who, at the first onset of her labour-pains,
exclaimed ‘Ah! mon Dieu!’ but whom the doctor would not
assist till she cried out ‘Aa-ee, aa-ee!’. Having come
to know the characteristics of the comic, we can no longer dispute
that this anecdote is in fact an example of comic unmasking and has
no justifiable claim to be called a joke. It only recalls jokes by
its setting and by the technical method of ‘representation by
something very small’ - in this case the patient’s cry,
which is found sufficient to establish the indication for
treatment. It nevertheless remains true that our linguistic sense,
if we call on it for a decision, raises no objection to our calling
a story like this a joke. We may explain this by reflecting that
linguistic usage is not based on the scientific insight into the
nature of jokes that we have arrived at in this laborious
investigation. Since one of the functions of jokes is to make
hidden sources of comic pleasure accessible once more (
p. 1698
), any device that brings to
light something that is not manifestly comic may, by a loose
analogy, be termed a joke. This applies preferably, however, to
unmasking as well as to other methods of making people
comic.¹

  
¹
‘Thus every conscious and ingenious
evocation of the comic (whether the comic of contemplation or of
situation) is in general described as a joke. We, of course, cannot
here make use of this concept of the joke either.’ (Lipps,
1898, 78.)

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1781

   Under the heading of
‘unmasking’ we may also include a procedure for making
things comic with which we are already acquainted - the method of
degrading the dignity of individuals by directing attention to the
frailties which they share with all humanity, but in particular the
dependence of their mental functions on bodily needs. The unmasking
is equivalent here to an admonition: such and such a person, who is
admired as a demigod, is after all only human like you and me.
Here, too, are to be placed the efforts at laying bare the
monotonous psychical automatism that lies behind the wealth and
apparent freedom of psychical functions. We came across examples of
‘unmasking’ of this kind in the marriage-broker jokes,
and felt a doubt at the time whether these anecdotes have a right
to be counted as jokes. We are now able to decide with greater
certainty that the anecdote of the echo who reinforced all the
assertions of the marriage-broker and finally confirmed his
admission that the bride had a hump with the exclamation ‘And
what
a hump!’ - that this anecdote is essentially a
comic
story, an example of the unmasking of a psychical
automatism. Here, however, the comic story is only serving as a
façade. For anyone who will attend to the hidden meaning of
the marriage-broker anecdotes, the whole thing remains an admirably
staged joke; anyone who does not penetrate so far is left with a
comic story. The same thing applies to the other joke, about the
marriage-broker who, in order to answer an objection, ended by
confessing the truth with a cry of ‘But I ask you, who would
lend such people anything?’. Here again we have a comic
unmasking as the façade for a joke, though in this instance
the characteristic of a joke is much more unmistakable, since the
marriage-broker’s remark is at the same time a representation
by the opposite. In trying to prove that the people are rich he at
the same time proves that they are
not
rich, but very poor.
Here a joke and the comic are combined, and teach us that the same
remark can be both things at once.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

 
1782

   We are glad to seize the
opportunity of returning to jokes from the comic of unmasking,
since our true problem is not to determine the nature of the comic
but to throw light on the relation between jokes and the comic. We
have discussed the uncovering of psychical automatism, in a case in
which our feeling as to whether something is comic or a joke left
us in the lurch. And we will now add another case in which there is
a similar confusion between jokes and the comic - the case of
nonsensical jokes. But our investigation will show us in the end
that as regards this second case the convergence between jokes and
the comic can be theoretically accounted for.

   In discussing the techniques of
jokes we found that giving free play to modes of thought which are
usual in the unconscious but which can only be judged as examples
of ‘faulty reasoning’ in the conscious is the technical
method adopted in many jokes; and about these, once again, we felt
doubts whether they possessed the true character of jokes, so that
we were inclined to classify them simply as comic stories. We were
unable to reach a decision about our doubts because at the time we
were ignorant of the essential characteristic of jokes.
Subsequently, led by an analogy with the dream-work, we discovered
that it lay in the compromise effected by the joke-work between the
demands of reasonable criticism and the urge not to renounce the
ancient pleasure in words and nonsense. What came about in this way
as a compromise, when the preconscious start of the thought was
left for a moment to unconscious revision, satisfied both claims in
every instance, but presented itself to criticism in various forms
and had to put up with various judgements at its hands. Sometimes a
joke would succeed in slipping on the appearance of an
insignificant but nevertheless permissible assertion, another time
it would smuggle itself in as the expression of a valuable thought.
But, in the marginal case of effecting a compromise, it would give
up attempting to satisfy criticism. Boasting of the sources of
pleasure at its command, it would appear before criticism as sheer
nonsense and not be afraid to provoke contradiction from it; for
the joke could reckon on the hearer straightening out the
disfigurement in the form of its expression by unconscious revision
and so giving it back its meaning.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1783

   In what instances, then, will a
joke appear before criticism as nonsense? Particularly when it
makes use of the modes of thought which are usual in the
unconscious but are proscribed in conscious thought - faulty
reasoning, in fact. For certain modes of thought proper to the
unconscious have also been retained by the conscious - for
instance, some kinds of indirect representation, allusion, and so
on - even though their conscious employment is subject to
considerable restrictions. When a joke makes use of these
techniques it will raise little or no objection on the part of
criticism; objections will only appear if it also makes use for its
technique of the methods with which conscious thought will have
nothing more to do. A joke can still avoid objection, if it
conceals the faulty reasoning it has used and disguises it under a
show of logic, as happened in the anecdotes of the cake and the
liqueur, of the salmon mayonnaise, and similar ones. But if it
produces the faulty reasoning undisguised, then the objections of
criticism will follow with certainty.

   In such cases the joke has
another resource. The faulty reasoning, which it uses for its
technique as one of the modes of thought of the unconscious,
strikes criticism - even though not invariably so - as being
comic
. Consciously giving free play to unconscious modes of
thought (which have been rejected as faulty) is a means of
producing comic pleasure; and it is easy to understand this, since
it certainly requires a greater expenditure of energy to establish
a preconscious cathexis than to give free play to an unconscious
one. When, on hearing a thought which has, as it were, been formed
in the unconscious, we compare it with its correction, a difference
in expenditure emerges for us from which comic pleasure arises. A
joke which makes use of faulty reasoning like this for its
technique, and therefore appears nonsensical, can thus produce a
comic effect at the same time. If we fail to detect the joke, we
are once again left with only the comic or funny story.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1784

   The story of the borrowed kettle
which had a hole in it when it was given back (
p. 1664
) is an excellent example of the
purely comic effect of giving free play to the unconscious mode of
thought. It will be recalled that the borrower, when he was
questioned, replied firstly that he had not borrowed a kettle at
all, secondly that it had had a hole in it already when he borrowed
it, and thirdly that he had given it back undamaged and without a
hole. This mutual cancelling-out by several thoughts, each of which
is in itself valid, is precisely what does not occur in the
unconscious. In dreams, in which the modes of thought of the
unconscious are actually manifest, there is accordingly no such
thing as an ‘either-or’,¹ only a simultaneous
juxtaposition. In the example of a dream, which, in spite of its
complication, I chose in my
Interpretation of Dreams
as a
specimen of the work of interpretation, I tried to rid myself of
the reproach of having failed to relieve a patient of her pains by
psychical treatment. My reasons were: (1) that she herself was
responsible for her illness because she would not accept my
solution, (2) that her pains were of organic origin and were
therefore no concern of mine, (3) that her pains were connected
with her widowhood, for which I was evidently not responsible and
(4) that her pains were due to an injection from a contaminated
syringe, which had been given her by someone else. All these
reasons stood side by side, as though they were not mutually
exclusive. I was obliged to replace the ‘and’ of the
dream by an ‘either-or’ in order to escape a charge of
nonsense.