Freud - Complete Works (738 page)

4539

HUMOUR

(1927)

4540

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4541

HUMOUR

In my volume on
Jokes and their Relation to
the Unconscious
(1905
c
), I in fact considered humour
only from the economic point of view. My object was to discover the
source of the pleasure obtained from humour, and I think I was able
to show that the yield of humorous pleasure arises from an economy
in expenditure upon feeling.

   There are two ways in which the
humorous process can take place. It may take place in regard to a
single person, who himself adopts the humorous attitude, while a
second person plays the part of the spectator who derives enjoyment
from it; or it may take place between two persons, of whom one
takes no part at all in the humorous process, but is made the
object of humorous contemplation by the other. When, to take the
crudest example, a criminal who was being led out to the gallows on
a Monday remarked: ‘Well, the week’s beginning
nicely’, he was producing the humour himself; the humorous
process is completed in his own person and obviously affords him a
certain sense of satisfaction. I, the non-participating listener,
am affected as it were at long-range by this humorous production of
the criminal’s; I feel, like him, perhaps, the yield of
humorous pleasure.

   We have an instance of the second
way in which humour arises when a writer or a narrator describes
the behaviour of real or imaginary people in a humorous manner.
There is no need for those people to display any humour themselves;
the humorous attitude is solely the business of the person who is
taking them as his object; and, as in the former instance, the
reader or hearer shares in the enjoyment of the humour. To sum up,
then, we can say that the humorous attitude - whatever it may
consist in - can be directed either towards the subject’s own
self or towards other people; it is to be assumed that it brings a
yield of pleasure to the person who adopts it, and a similar yield
of pleasure falls to the share of the non-participating
onlooker.

   We shall best understand the
genesis of the yield of humorous pleasure if we consider the
process in the listener before whom someone else produces humour.
He sees this other person in a situation which leads the listener
to expect that the other will produce the signs of an affect - that
he will get angry, complain, express pain, be frightened or
horrified or perhaps even in despair; and the onlooker or listener
is prepared to follow his lead and to call up the same emotional
impulses in himself. But this emotional expectancy is disappointed;
the other person expresses no affect, but makes a jest. The
expenditure on feeling that is economized turns into humorous
pleasure in the listener.

Humour

4542

   It is easy to get so far. But we
soon tell ourselves that it is the process which takes place in the
other person - the ‘humorist’ - that merits the greater
attention. There is no doubt that the essence of humour is that one
spares oneself the affects to which the situation would naturally
give rise and dismisses the possibility of such expressions of
emotion with a jest. As far as this goes, the process in the
humorist must tally with the process in the hearer - or, to put it
more correctly, the process in the hearer must have copied the one
in the humorist. But how does the latter bring about the mental
attitude which makes a release of affect superfluous? What are the
dynamics of his adoption of the ‘humorous attitude’?
Clearly, the solution of the problem is to be sought in the
humorist; in the hearer we must assume that there is only an echo,
a copy, of this unknown process.

   It is now time to acquaint
ourselves with a few of the characteristics of humour. Like jokes
and the comic, humour has something liberating about it; but it
also has something of grandeur and elevation, which is lacking in
the other two ways of obtaining pleasure from intellectual
activity. The grandeur in it clearly lies in the triumph of
narcissism, the victorious assertion of the ego’s
invulnerability. The ego refuses to be distressed by the
provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It
insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external
world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than
occasions for it to gain pleasure. This last feature is a quite
essential element of humour. Let us suppose that the criminal who
was being led to execution on Monday had said: ‘It
doesn’t worry me. What does it matter, after all, if a fellow
like me is hanged? The world won’t come to an end because of
it.’ We should have to admit that such a speech does in fact
display the same magnificent superiority over the real situation.
It is wise and true; but it does not betray a trace of humour.
Indeed, it is based on an appraisal of reality which runs directly
counter to the appraisal made by humour. Humour is not resigned; it
is rebellious. It signifies not only the triumph of the ego but
also of the pleasure principle, which is able here to assert itself
against the unkindness of the real circumstances.

Humour

4543

   These last two features - the
rejection of the claims of reality and the putting though of the
pleasure principle - bring humour near to the regressive or
reactionary processes which engage our attention so extensively in
psychopathology. Its fending off of the possibility of suffering
places it among the great series of methods which the human mind
has constructed in order to evade the compulsion to suffer - a
series which begins with neurosis and culminates in madness and
which includes intoxication, self-absorption and ecstasy. Thanks to
this connection, humour possesses a dignity which is wholly
lacking, for instance, in jokes, for jokes either serve simply to
obtain a yield of pleasure or place the yield of pleasure that has
been obtained in the service of aggression. In what, then, does the
humorous attitude consist, an attitude by means of which a person
refuses to suffer, emphasizes the invincibility of his ego by the
real world, victoriously maintains the pleasure principle - and all
this, in contrast to other methods having the same purposes,
without overstepping the bounds of mental health? The two
achievements seem incompatible.

   If we turn to the situation in
which one person adopts a humorous attitude towards others, a view
which I have already put forward tentatively in my book on jokes
will at once suggest itself. This is that the subject is behaving
towards them as an adult does towards a child when he recognizes
and smiles at the triviality of interests and sufferings which seem
so great to it. Thus the humorist would acquire his superiority by
assuming the role of the grown-up and identifying himself to some
extent with his father, and reducing the other people to being
children. This view probably covers the facts, but it hardly seems
a conclusive one. One asks oneself what it is that makes the
humorist arrogate this role to himself.

Humour

4544

   But we must recall the other,
probably more primary and important, situation of humour, in which
a person adopts a humorous attitude towards himself in order to
ward off possible suffering. Is there any sense in saying that
someone is treating himself like a child and is at the same time
playing the part of a superior adult towards that child?

   This not very plausible idea
receives strong support, I think, if we consider what we have
learned from pathological observations on the structure of the ego.
This ego is not a simple entity. It harbours within it, as its
nucleus, a special agency the super-ego. Sometimes it is merged
with the super-ego so that we cannot distinguish between them,
whereas in other circumstances it is sharply differentiated from
it. Genetically the super-ego is the heir to the parental agency.
It often keeps the ego in strict dependence and still really treats
it as the parents, or the father, once treated the child, in its
early years. We obtain a dynamic explanation of the humorous
attitude, therefore, if we assume that it consists in the
humorist’s having withdrawn the psychical accent from his ego
and having transposed it on to his super-ego. To the super-ego,
thus inflated, the ego can appear tiny and all its interests
trivial; and, with this new distribution of energy, it may become
an easy matter for the super-ego to suppress the ego’s
possibilities of reacting.

   In order to remain faithful to
our customary phraseology, we shall have to speak, not of
transposing the psychical accent, but of displacing large amounts
of cathexis. The question then is whether we are entitled to
picture extensive displacements like this from one agency of the
mental apparatus to another. It looks like a new hypothesis
constructed
ad hoc
. Yet we may remind ourselves that we have
repeatedly (even though not sufficiently often) taken a factor of
this kind into account in our attempts at a metapsychological
picture of mental events. Thus, for instance, we supposed that the
difference between an ordinary erotic object-cathexis and the state
of being in love is that in the latter incomparably more cathexis
passes over to the object and that the ego empties itself as it
were in favour of the object. In studying some cases of paranoia I
was able to establish the fact that ideas of persecution are formed
early and exist for a long time without any perceptible effect,
until, as the result of some particular precipitating event, they
receive sufficient amounts of cathexis to cause them to become
dominant. The cure, too, of such paranoic attacks would lie not so
much in a resolution and correction of the delusional ideas as in a
withdrawal from them of the cathexis which has been lent to them.
The alternations between melancholia and mania, between a cruel
suppression of the ego by the super-ego and a liberation of the ego
after that pressure, suggests a shift of cathexis of this kind;
such a shift, moreover, would have to be brought in to explain a
whole number of phenomena belonging to normal mental life. If this
has been done hitherto only to a very limited extent, that is on
account of our usual caution - something which deserves only
praise. The region in which we feel secure is that of the pathology
of mental life; it is here that we make our observations and
acquire our convictions. For the present we venture to form a
judgement on the normal mind only in so far as we can discern what
is normal in the isolations and distortions of the pathological
material. When once we have overcome this hesitancy we shall
recognize what a large contribution is made to the understanding of
mental processes by the static conditions as well as by the dynamic
changes in the
quantity
of energic cathexis.

Humour

4545

   I think, therefore, that the
possibility I have suggested here, that in a particular situation
the subject suddenly hypercathects his super-ego and then,
proceeding from it, alters the reactions of the ego, is one which
deserves to be retained. Moreover, what I have suggested about
humour finds a remarkable analogy in the kindred field of jokes. As
regards the origin of jokes I was led to assume that a preconscious
thought is given over for a moment to unconscious revision. A joke
is thus the contribution made to the comic by the unconscious. In
just the same way,
humour would be the contribution made to the
comic through the agency of the super-ego
.

   In other connections we knew the
super-ego as a severe master. It will be said that it accords ill
with such a character that the super-ego should condescend to
enabling the ego to obtain a small yield of pleasure. It is true
that humorous pleasure never reaches the intensity of the pleasure
in the comic or in jokes, that it never finds vent in hearty
laughter. It is also true that, in bringing about the humorous
attitude, the super-ego is actually repudiating reality and serving
an illusion. But (without rightly knowing why) we regard this less
intense pleasure as having a character of very high value; we feel
it to be especially liberating and elevating. Moreover, the jest
made by humour is not the essential thing. It has only the value of
a preliminary. The main thing is the intention which humour carries
out, whether it is acting in relation to the self or other people.
It means: ‘Look! here is the world, which seems so dangerous!
It is nothing but a game for children - just worth making a jest
about!’

   If it is really the super-ego
which, in humour, speaks such kindly words of comfort to the
intimidated ego, this will teach us that we have still a great deal
to learn about the nature of the super-ego. Furthermore, not
everyone is capable of the humorous attitude. It is a rare and
precious gift, and many people are even without the capacity to
enjoy humorous pleasure that is presented to them. And finally, if
the super-ego tries, by means of humour, to console the ego and
protect it from suffering, this does not contradict its origin in
the parental agency.

4546

A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

(1928)

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4548

A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

In the autumn of 1927, G. S. Viereck, a
German-American journalist who had paid me a welcome visit,
published an account of a conversation with me, in the course of
which he mentioned my lack of religious faith and my indifference
on the subject of survival after death. This ‘interview, as
it was called, was widely read and brought me, among others, the
following letter from an American physician:

   ‘. . . What struck me most
was your answer to the question whether you believe in a survival
of personality after death. You are reported as having said:
"I give no thought to the matter."

   ‘I am writing now to tell
you of an experience that I had in the year I graduated at the
University of X. One afternoon while I was passing through the
dissecting-room my attention was attracted to a sweet-faced dear
old woman who was being carried to a dissecting-table. This
sweet-faced woman made such an impression on me that a thought
flashed up in my mind: "There is no God: if there were a God
he would not have allowed this dear old woman to be brought into
the dissecting room."

   ‘When I got home that
afternoon the feeling I had had at the sight in the dissecting-room
had determined me to discontinue going to church. The doctrines of
Christianity had before this been the subject of doubts in my
mind.

   ‘While I was meditating on
this matter a voice spoke to my soul that "I should consider
the step I was about to take". My spirit replied to this inner
voice by saying, "If I knew of a certainty that Christianity
was truth and the Bible was the Word of God, then I would accept
it."

   ‘In the course of the next
few days God made it clear to my soul that the Bible was His Word,
that the teachings about Jesus Christ were true, and that Jesus was
our only hope. After such a clear revelation I accepted the Bible
as God’s Word and Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour. Since
then God has revealed Himself to me by many infallible proofs.

   ‘I beg you as a brother
physician to give thought to this most important matter, and I can
assure you, if you look into this subject with an open mind, God
will reveal the
truth
to your soul, the same as he did to me
and to multitudes of others. . . .’

A Religious Experience

4549

   I sent a polite answer, saying
that I was glad to hear that this experience had enabled him to
retain his faith. As for myself, God had not done so much for me.
He had never allowed me to hear an inner voice; and if, in view of
my age, he did not make haste, it would not be my fault if I
remained to the end of my life what I now was - ‘an infidel
Jew’.

   In the course of a friendly
reply, my colleague gave me an assurance that being a Jew was not
an obstacle in the pathway to true faith and proved this by several
instances. His letter culminated in the information that prayers
were being earnestly addressed to God that he might grant me
‘faith to believe’.

   I am still awaiting the outcome
of this intercession. In the meantime, my colleague’s
religious experience provides food for thought. It seems to me to
demand some attempt at an interpretation based upon emotional
motives; for his experience is puzzling in itself and is based on
particularly bad logic. God, as we know, allows horrors to take
place of a kind very different from the removal to a
dissecting-room of the dead body of a pleasant-looking old woman.
This has been true at all times, and it must have been so while my
American colleague was pursuing his studies. Nor, as a medical
student, can he have been so sheltered from the world as to have
known nothing of such evils. Why was it, then, that his indignation
against God broke out precisely when he received this particular
impression in the dissecting-room?

   For anyone who is accustomed to
regard men’s internal experiences and actions analytically
the explanation is very obvious - so obvious that it actually crept
into my recollections of the facts themselves. Once, when I was
referring to my pious colleague’s letter in the course of a
discussion, I spoke of his having written that the dead
woman’s face had reminded him of his own mother. In fact
these words were not in his letter, and a moment’s reflection
will show that they could not possibly have been. But that is the
explanation irresistibly forced on us by his affectionately phrased
description of the ‘sweet-faced dear old woman’. Thus
the weakness of judgement displayed by the young doctor is to be
accounted for by the emotion roused in him by the memory of his
mother. It is difficult to escape from the bad psycho-analytic
habit of bringing forward as evidence details which also allow of
more superficial explanations - and I am tempted to recall the fact
that my colleague addressed me later as a ‘brother
physician’.

A Religious Experience

4550

   We may suppose, therefore, that
this was the way in which things happened. The sight of a
woman’s dead body, naked or on the point of being stripped,
reminded the young man of his mother. It roused in him a longing
for his mother which sprang from his Oedipus complex, and this was
immediately completed by a feeling of indignation against his
father. His ideas of ‘father’ and ‘God’ had
not yet become widely separated; so that his desire to destroy his
father could become conscious as doubt in the existence of God and
could seek to justify itself in the eyes of reason as indignation
about the ill-treatment of a mother object. It is of course typical
for a child to regard what his father does to his mother in sexual
intercourse as ill-treatment. The new impulse, which was displaced
into the sphere of religion, was only a repetition of the Oedipus
situation and consequently soon met with a similar fate. It
succumbed to a powerful opposing current. During the actual
conflict the level of displacement was not maintained: there is no
mention of arguments in justification of God, nor are we told what
the infallible signs were by which God proved his existence to the
doubter. The conflict seems to have been unfolded in the form of a
hallucinatory psychosis: inner voices were heard which uttered
warnings against resistance to God. But the outcome of the struggle
was displayed once again in the sphere of religion and it was of a
kind predetermined by the fate of the Oedipus complex: complete
submission to the will of God the Father. The young man became a
believer and accepted everything he had been taught since his
childhood about God and Jesus Christ. He had had a religious
experience and had undergone a conversion.

   All of this is so simple and
straightforward that we cannot but ask ourselves whether by
understanding this case we have thrown any light at all on the
psychology of conversion in general. I may refer the reader to an
admirable volume on the subject by Sante de Sanctis (1924), which
incidentally takes all the findings of psycho-analysis into
account. Study of this work confirms our expectation that by no
means every case of conversion can be understood so easily as this
one. In no respect, however, does our case contradict the views
arrived at on the subject by modern research. The point which our
present observation throws into relief is the manner in which the
conversion was attached to a particular determining event, which
caused the subject’s scepticism to flare up for a last time
before being finally extinguished.