Freud - Complete Works (315 page)

   There is a similar comic story of
a Hungarian village in which the blacksmith had been guilty of a
capital offence. The burgomaster, however, decided that as a
penalty a
tailor
should be hanged and not the blacksmith,
because there were two tailors in the village but no second
blacksmith, and the crime must be expiated. A displacement of this
kind from the figure of the guilty person to another naturally
contradicts every law of conscious logic but by no means the mode
of thought of the unconscious. I do not hesitate to call this story
comic, and yet I have included the one about the kettle among the
jokes. I will now admit that this latter story too is far more
correctly described as ‘comic’ rather than as a joke.
But I now understand how it is that my feeling, which is as a rule
so sure, can leave me in doubt as to whether this story is comic or
a joke. This is a case in which I cannot come to a decision on the
basis of my feeling - when, that is, the comic arises from the
uncovering of a mode of thought that is exclusively proper to the
unconscious. A story like this may be comic and a joke at the same
time; but it will give me the impression of being a joke, even if
it is merely comic, because the use of the faulty reasoning of the
unconscious reminds me of jokes, just as did the manoeuvres for
uncovering what is not manifestly comic (
p. 1781
).

   I set great store by clarifying
this most delicate point in my arguments - the relation of jokes to
the comic; and I will therefore supplement what I have said with a
few negative statements. I may first draw attention to the fact
that the instance of the convergence of jokes and the comic which I
am dealing with here is not identical with the former one (
p. 1781
). It is true that the
distinction is a rather narrow one, but it can be made with
certainty. In the earlier case the comic arose from the uncovering
of psychical automatism. This, however, is by no means peculiar to
the unconscious alone, nor does it play any striking part in the
technique of jokes. Unmasking only comes into relation with jokes
accidentally, when it serves some other joke-technique, such as
representation by the opposite. But in the case of giving free play
to unconscious modes of thought the convergence of jokes and the
comic is a
necessary
one, since the same method which is
used here by the first person of the joke as a technique for
releasing pleasure must from its very nature produce comic pleasure
in the third person.

  
¹
At the most, it is introduced by the
narrator by way of interpretation.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1785

   One might be tempted to
generalize from this last case and look for the relation of jokes
to the comic in the notion that the effect of jokes on the third
person takes place according to the mechanism of comic pleasure.
But there is no question of this being so. Contact with the comic
is by no means to be found in all jokes or even in the majority of
them; in most cases, on the contrary, a clear distinction is to be
made between jokes and the comic. Whenever a joke succeeds in
escaping the appearance of nonsense - that is, in most jokes
accompanied by double meaning and allusion - there is no trace to
be found in the hearer of any effect resembling the comic. This may
be tested in the examples I have given earlier, or on a few new
ones that I can bring up:

   Telegram of congratulations to a
gambler on his seventieth Birthday: ‘
Trente et
quarante
.’ (Dividing-up with allusion.)

   Hevesi somewhere describes the
process of tobacco manufacture: ‘The bright yellow leaves . .
. were dipped in a sauce and were sauced in this dip.’
(Multiple use of the same material).

   Madame de Maintenon was known as
‘Madame de
Maintenant
’. (Modification of a
name.)

   Professor Kästner said to a
prince who stood in front of a telescope during a demonstration:
‘Your Highness, I know quite well that you are
"
durchläuchtig
[illustrious]",¹ but you
are not "
durchsigtig
[transparent]."'

   Count Andrássy was known
as ‘ Minister of the Fine Exterior’.

   It might further be thought that
at any rate all jokes with a façade of nonsense will seem
comic and must produce a comic affect. But I must recall that jokes
of this kind very often affect the hearer in another way and
provoke bewilderment and a tendency to repudiation (see 
p. 1727 
n
.
). Thus it
evidently depends on whether the nonsense of a joke appears as
comic or as sheer ordinary nonsense - and we have not yet
investigated what determines this. We therefore stick to our
conclusion that jokes are from their nature to be distinguished
from the comic and only converge with it, on the one hand in
certain special cases, and on the other hand in their aim of
obtaining pleasure from intellectual sources.

   During these enquiries into the
relations between jokes and the comic the distinction has become
plain to us which we must emphasize as the most important and which
points at the same time to a main psychological characteristic of
the comic. We found ourselves obliged to locate the pleasure in
jokes in the unconscious; no reason is to be found for making the
same localization in the case of the comic. On the contrary, all
the analyses we have hitherto made have pointed to the source of
comic pleasure being a comparison between two expenditures both of
which must be ascribed to the preconscious. Jokes and the comic are
distinguished first and foremost in their psychical localization;
the joke, it may be said, is the contribution made to the comic
from the realm of the unconscious
.

  
¹
[An adjective derived from
‘
Durchlaucht
’, a title applied to minor royalty:
‘Serene Highness’.]

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1786

   There is no need to apologize for
this digression, since the relation of jokes to the comic was the
reason for our being forced into an investigation of the comic. But
it is certainly time we returned to our previous topic - the
discussion of the methods which serve for making things comic. We
considered caricature and unmasking first, because we can derive
some indications from these two for the analysis of the comic of
mimicry
. As a rule, no doubt, mimicry is permeated with
caricature - the exaggeration of traits that are not otherwise
striking -, and it also involves the characteristic of degradation.
But this does not seem to exhaust its nature. It cannot be disputed
that it is in itself an extraordinarily fertile source of comic
pleasure, for we laugh particularly at the
faithfulness
of a
piece of mimicry. It is not easy to give a satisfactory explanation
of this unless one is prepared to adopt the view held by Bergson
(1900), which approximates the comic of mimicry to the comic due to
the discovery of psychical automatism. Bergson’s opinion is
that everything in a living person that makes one think of an
inanimate mechanism has a comic effect. His formula for this runs
‘
mécanisation de la vie
’. He explains the
comic of mimicry by starting out from a problem raised by Pascal in
his
Pensées
of why it is that one laughs when one
compares two similar faces neither of which has a comic effect by
itself. ‘What is living should never, according to our
expectation, be repeated exactly the same. When we find such a
repetition we always suspect some mechanism lying behind the living
thing.’ When one sees two faces that resemble each other
closely, one thinks of two impressions from the same mould or of
some similar mechanical procedure. In short, the cause of laughter
in such cases would be the divergence of the living from the
inanimate, or, as we might say, the degradation of the living to
the inanimate (ibid., 35). If, moreover, we were to accept these
plausible suggestions of Bergson’s, we should not find it
difficult to include his view under our own formula. Experience has
taught us that every living thing is different from every other and
calls for a kind of expenditure by our understanding; and we find
ourselves disappointed if, as a result of complete conformity or
deceptive mimicry, we need make no fresh expenditure. But we are
disappointed in the sense of a relief, and the expenditure on
expectation which has become superfluous is discharged by laughter.
The same formula would also cover all the cases which Bergson
considers of comic rigidity (‘
raideur
’), of
professional customs, fixed ideas, and turns of speech repeated on
every possible occasion. All these cases would go back to a
comparison between the expenditure on expectation and the
expenditure actually required for an understanding of something
that has remained the same; and the larger amount needed for
expectation would be based on observation of the multiplicity and
plasticity of living things. In the case of mimicry, accordingly,
the source of the comic pleasure would be not the comic of
situation but of expectation.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1787

   Since we derive comic pleasure in
general from a comparison, it is incumbent on us to examine the
comic of comparison itself; and this, indeed, serves as a method of
making things comic. Our interest in this question will be
increased when we recall that in the case of analogies, too, we
often found that our ‘feeling’ left us in the lurch as
to whether something was to be called a joke or merely comic (
p. 1680 f.
).

   The subject would, it must be
admitted, deserve more careful treatment than our interests can
devote to it. The main attribute that we enquire after in an
analogy is whether it is apt - that is, whether it draws attention
to a conformity which is really present in two different objects.
The original pleasure in rediscovering the same thing (Groos, 1899,
153) is not the only motive that favours the use of analogies;
there is the further fact that analogies are capable of a use which
brings with it a relief of intellectual work - if, that is to say,
one follows the usual practice of comparing what is less known with
what is better known or the abstract with the concrete, and by the
comparison elucidates what is more unfamiliar or more difficult.
Every such comparison, especially of something abstract with
something concrete, involves a certain degradation and a certain
economy in expenditure on abstraction (in the sense of ideational
mimetics), but this is of course not sufficient to allow the
characteristic of the comic to come clearly into prominence. It
does not emerge suddenly but gradually from the pleasure of the
relief brought about by the comparison. There are plenty of cases
which merely fringe on the comic and in which doubt might be felt
whether they show the characteristic of the comic. The comparison
becomes undoubtedly comic if there is a rise in the level of
difference between the expenditure on abstraction in the two things
that are being compared, if something serious and unfamiliar,
especially if it is of an intellectual or moral nature, is brought
into comparison with something commonplace and inferior. The
previous pleasure of the relief and the contribution from the
determinants of ideational mimetics may perhaps explain the gradual
transition, conditioned by quantitative factors, from general
pleasure to comic pleasure during the comparison. I shall no doubt
avoid misunderstandings if I stress the fact that I do not trace
the comic pleasure in analogies to the contrast between the two
things compared but to the difference between the two expenditures
on abstraction. When an unfamiliar thing that is hard to take in, a
thing that is abstract and in fact sublime in an intellectual
sense, is alleged to tally with something familiar and inferior, in
imagining which there is a complete absence of any expenditure on
abstraction, then that abstract thing is itself unmasked as
something equally inferior. The comic of comparison is thus reduced
to a case of degradation.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1788

   A comparison can, however, as we
have already seen, be in the nature of a joke, without a trace of
comic admixture - precisely, that is, when it avoids degradation.
Thus the comparison of truth with a torch that cannot be carried
through a crowd without singeing someone’s beard is purely in
the nature of a joke, because it takes a watered-down turn of
speech (‘the torch of truth’) at its full value, and it
is not comic, because a torch as an object, though it is a concrete
thing, is not without a certain distinction. But a comparison can
just as easily be a joke and comic as well, and can be each
independently of the other, since a comparison can be of help to
certain techniques of jokes, such as unification or allusion. In
this way Nestroy’s comparison of memory to a
‘warehouse’ (
p. 1683
) is
at once comic and a joke - the former because of the extraordinary
degradation which the psychological concept has to put up with in
being compared to a ‘warehouse’, and the latter because
the person making use of the comparison is a clerk, who thus
establishes in the comparison a quite unexpected unification
between psychology and his profession. Heine’s phrase
‘till at last all the buttons burst on the breeches of my
patience’ seems at first sight to be no more than a
remarkable example of a comically degrading comparison; but on
further consideration we must also allow it the characteristics of
a joke, since the comparison, as a means of allusion, impinges on
the region of the obscene and so succeeds in liberating pleasure in
the obscene. The same material, by what is admittedly not an
entirely chance coincidence, provides us with a yield of pleasure
which is simultaneously comic and of the character of a joke. If
the conditions of the one favour the generation of the other, their
union has a confusing effect on the ‘feeling’ which is
supposed to tell us whether we are being offered a joke or
something comic, and a decision can only be arrived at by an
attentive investigation that has been freed from any predisposition
to a particular kind of pleasure.