Wit and its relation to the unconscious · Sigmund Freud
III THE TENDENCIES OF WIT[37]
Although the hindrance to the aggression which the wit helped to elude was in these cases of an inner nature—the æsthetic resistance against insulting—it may at other times be of a purely outer nature. So it was in the case when Serenissimus asked the stranger who had a striking resemblance to himself: “Was your mother ever in my home?” and he received the ready reply, “No, but my father was.” The stranger would certainly have felled the imprudent inquirer who dared to make an ignominious allusion to the memory of his mother; but this imprudent person was Serenissimus, who may not be felled and not even insulted unless one wishes to pay for this revenge with his life. The only thing left was to swallow the insult in silence; but luckily wit pointed out the way of requiting the insult without personally imperiling one’s self. It was accomplished simply by treating the allusion with the technical means of unification and employing it against the aggressor. The impression of wit is here so thoroughly determined by the tendency that in view of the witty rejoinder we are inclined to forget that the aggressor’s inquiry is itself made witty by allusion. _Rebellion Against Authority Through Wit_ The prevention of abuse or insulting retorts through outer circumstances is so often the case that tendency-wit is used with special preference as a weapon of attack or criticism of superiors who claim to be an authority. Wit then serves as a resistance against such authority and as an escape from its pressure. In this factor, too, lies the charm of caricature, at which we laugh even if it is badly done simply because we consider its resistance to authority a great merit.
If we keep in mind that tendency-wit is so well adapted as a weapon of attack upon what is great, dignified, and mighty, that which is shielded by internal hindrances or external circumstance against direct disparagement, we are forced to a special conception of certain groups of witticisms which seem to occupy themselves with inferior and powerless persons. I am referring to the marriage-agent stories,—with a few of which we have become familiar in the investigation of the manifold techniques of thought-wit. In some of these examples, “But she is deaf, too!” and “Who in the world would ever lend these people anything!” the agent was derided as a careless and thoughtless person who becomes comical because the truth escapes his lips automatically, as it were. But does on the one hand what we have learned about the nature of tendency-wit, and on the other hand the amount of satisfaction in these stories, harmonize with the misery of the persons at whom the joke seems to be pointed? Are these worthy opponents of the wit? Or, is it not more plausible to suppose that the wit puts the agent in the foreground only in order to strike at something more important; does it, as the saying goes, strike the saddle pack, when it is meant for the mule? This conception can really not be rejected.
The above-mentioned interpretation of the marriage-agent stories admits of a continuation. It is true that I need not enter into them, that I can content myself with seeing the farcical in these stories, and can dispute their witty character. However, such subjective determination of wit actually exists. We have now become cognizant of it and shall later on have to investigate it. It means that only that is a witticism which I wish to consider as such. What may be wit to me, may be only an amusing story to another. But if a witticism admits of doubt, that can be due only to the fact that it is possessed of a show-side,—in our examples it happens to be a façade of the comic,—upon which one may be satisfied to bestow a single glance while another may attempt to peep behind. We also suspect that this façade is intended to dazzle the prying glance which is to say that such stories have something to conceal.
At all events, if our marriage-agent stories are witticisms at all, they are all the better witticisms because, thanks to their façade, they are in a position to conceal not only what they have to say but also that they have something—forbidden—to say. But the continuation of the interpretation, which reveals this hidden part and shows that these stories having a comical façade are tendency-witticisms, would be as follows: Every one who allows the truth to escape his lips in an unguarded moment is really pleased to have rid himself of this thought. This is a correct and far-reaching psychological insight. Without the inner assent no one would allow himself to be overpowered by the automatism which here brings the truth to light.[41] The marriage agent is thus transformed from a ludicrous personage into an object deserving of pity and sympathy. How blest must be the man, able at last to unburden himself of the weight of dissimulation, if he immediately seizes the first opportunity to shout out the last fragment of truth!
As soon as he sees that his case is lost, that the prospective bride does not suit the young man, he gladly betrays the secret that the girl has still another blemish which the young man had overlooked, or he makes use of the chance to present a conclusive argument in detail in order to express his contempt for the people who employ him: “Who in the world would ever lend these people anything!” The ludicrousness of the whole thing now reverts upon the parents,—hardly mentioned in the story,—who consider such deceptions justified to clutch a man for their daughter; it also reflects upon the wretched state of the girls who get married through such contrivances, and upon the want of dignity of the marriage contracted after such preliminaries. The agent is the right person to express such criticisms, for he is best acquainted with these abuses; but he may not raise his voice, because he is a poor man whose livelihood depends altogether on turning these abuses to his advantage. But the same conflict is found in the national spirit which has given rise to these and similar stories; for he is aware that the holiness of wedlock suffers severely by reference to some of the methods of marriage-making.
We recall also the observation made during the investigation of wit-technique, namely, that absurdity in wit frequently stands for derision and criticism in the thought behind the witticism, wherein the wit-work follows the dream-work. This state of affairs, we find, is here once more confirmed. That the derision and criticism are not aimed at the agent, who appears in the former examples only as the whipping boy of the joke, is shown by another series in which the agent, on the contrary, is pictured as a superior person whose dialectics are a match for any difficulty. They are stories whose façades are logical instead of comical—they are sophistic thought-witticisms. In one of them (p. 83) the agent knows how to circumvent the limping of the bride by stating that in her case it is at least “a finished job”; another woman with straight limbs would be in constant danger of falling and breaking a leg, which would be followed by sickness, pains, and doctor’s fees—all of which can be avoided by marrying the one already limping.
Again in another example (p. 81) the agent is clever enough to refute by good arguments each of the whole series of the suitor’s objections against the bride; only to the last, which cannot be glossed over, he rejoins, “Do you expect her to have no blemishes at all?” as if the other objections had not left behind an important remnant. It is not difficult to pick out the weak points of the arguments in both examples, a thing which we have done during the investigation of the technique. But now something else interests us. If the agent’s speech is endowed with such a strong semblance of logic, which on more careful examination proves to be merely a semblance, then the truth must be lurking in the fact that the witticism adjudges the agent to be right. The thought does not dare to admit that he is right in all seriousness, and replaces it by the semblance which the wit brings forth; but here, as it often happens, the jest betrays the seriousness of it. We shall not err if we assume that all stories with logical façades really mean what they assert even if these assertions are deliberately falsely motivated. Only this use of sophism for the veiled presentation of the truth endows it with the character of wit, which is mainly dependent upon tendency. What these two stories wish to indicate is that the suitor really makes himself ridiculous when he collects together so sedulously the individual charms of the bride which are transient after all, and when he forgets at the same time that he must be prepared to take as his wife a human being with inevitable faults; whereas, the only virtue which might make tolerable marriage with the more or less imperfect personality of the woman,—mutual attachment and willingness for affectionate adaptation,—is not once mentioned in the whole affair.
Ridicule of the suitor as seen in these examples in which the agent quite correctly assumes the rôle of superiority, is much more clearly depicted in other examples. The more pointed the stories, the less wit-technique they contain; they are, as it were, merely border-line cases of wit with whose technique they have only the façade-formation in common. However, in view of the same tendency and the concealment of the same behind the façade, they obtain the full effect of wit. The poverty of technical means makes it clear also that many witticisms of that kind cannot dispense with the comic element of jargon which acts similarly to wit-technique without great sacrifices. The following is such a story, which with all the force of tendency-wit obviates all traces of that technique. _The agent asks: “What are you looking for in your bride?” The reply is: “She must be pretty, she must be rich, and she must be cultured.” “Very well,” was the agent’s rejoinder. “But what you want will make three matches.”_ Here the reproach is no longer embodied in wit, but is made directly to the man.
I recall the two little stories about the impecunious gourmand who was caught eating “salmon with mayonnaise,” and about the tippling tutor; these witty stories, which we have learned to regard as sophistical displacement-wit, I shall continue to analyze. We have learned since then that when the semblance of logic is attached to the façade of a story, the actual thought is as follows: The man is right; but on account of the opposing contradiction, I did not dare to admit the fact except for one point in which his error is easily demonstrable. The “point” chosen is the correct compromise between his right and his wrong; this is really no decision, but bespeaks the conflict within ourselves. Both stories are simply epicurean. They say, Yes, the man is right; nothing is greater than pleasure, and it is fairly immaterial in what manner one procures it. This sounds frightfully immoral, and perhaps it is, but fundamentally it is nothing more than the “_Carpe diem_” of the poet who refers to the uncertainty of life and the bareness of virtuous renunciation. If we are repelled by the idea that the man in the joke about “salmon with mayonnaise” is in the right, then it is merely due to the fact that it illustrates the sound sense of the man in indulging himself—an indulgence which seems to us wholly unnecessary. In reality each one of us has experienced hours and times during which he has admitted the justice of this philosophy of life and has reproached our system of morality for knowing only how to make claims upon us without reimbursing us. Since we no longer lend credence to the idea of a hereafter in which all former renunciations are supposed to be rewarded by gratification—(there are very few pious persons if one makes renunciation the password of faith)—“_Carpe diem_” becomes the first admonition. I am quite ready to postpone the gratification, but how do I know whether I shall still be alive to-morrow?
“Di doman’ non c’e certezza.”[42] I am quite willing to give up all the paths to gratification interdicted by society, but am I sure that society will reward me for this renunciation by opening for me—even after a certain delay—one of the permitted paths? One can plainly tell what these witticisms whisper, namely, that the wishes and desires of man have a right to make themselves perceptible next to our pretentious and inconsiderate morality. And in our times it has been said in emphatic and striking terms that this morality is merely the selfish precept of the few rich and mighty who can gratify their desires at any time without deferment. As long as the art of healing has not succeeded in safeguarding our lives, and as long as the social organizations do not do more towards making conditions more agreeable, just so long cannot the voice within us which is striving against the demands of morality, be stifled. Every honest person finally makes this admission—at least to himself. The decision in this conflict is possible only through the roundabout way of a new understanding. One must be able to knit one’s life so closely to that of others, and to form such an intimate identification with others, that the shortening of one’s own term of life becomes surmountable; one should not unlawfully fulfill the demands of one’s own needs, but should leave them unfulfilled, because only the continuance of so many unfulfilled demands can develop the power to recast the social order. But not all personal needs allow themselves to be displaced in such a manner and transferred to others, nor is there a universal and definite solution of the conflict.
We have already elucidated the complicated technique of this example; it is a puzzling and seemingly impossible comparison which however, as we now see, is not in itself witty; it shows besides an allusion (cab = public conveyance), and as the strongest technical means it also shows an omission which serves to make it still more unintelligible. The comparison may be worked out in the following manner. A man marries in order to guard himself against the temptations of sensuality, but it then turns out that after all marriage affords no gratification for one of stronger needs, just as one takes along an umbrella for protection against rain only to get wet in spite of it. In both cases one must search for better protection; in one case one must take a public cab, in the other women procurable for money. Now the wit has almost entirely been replaced by cynicism. That marriage is not the organization which can satisfy a man’s sexuality, one does not dare to say loudly and frankly unless indeed it be one like Christian v. Ehrenfels,[43] who is forced to it by the love of truth and the zeal of reform. The strength of this witticism lies in the fact that it has expressed the thought even though it had to be done through all sorts of roundabout ways.
_Cynical Witticisms and Self-criticism_ A particularly favorable case for tendency-wit results if the intended criticism of the inner resistance is directed against one’s own person, or, more carefully expressed, against a person in whom one takes interest, that is, a composite personality such as one’s own people. This determination of self-criticism may make clear why it is that a number of the most excellent jokes of which we have shown here many specimens should have sprung into existence from the soil of Jewish national life. They are stories which were invented by Jews themselves and which are directed against Jewish peculiarities. The Jewish jokes made up by non-Jews are nearly all brutal buffooneries in which the wit is spared by the fact that the Jew appears as a comic figure to a stranger. The Jewish jokes which originate with Jews admit this, but they know their real shortcomings as well as their merits, and the interest of the person himself in the thing to be criticised produces the subjective determination of the wit-work which would otherwise be difficult to bring about. Incidentally I do not know whether one often finds a people that makes merry so unreservedly over its own shortcomings.
As an illustration I can point to the story cited on page 112 in which the Jew in the train immediately abandons all sense of decency of deportment as soon as he recognizes the new arrival in his coupé as his coreligionist. We have come to know this joke as an illustration by means of a detail—representation through a trifle; it is supposed to represent the democratic mode of thought of the Jew who recognizes no difference between master and servant, but unfortunately this also disturbs discipline and co-operation. Another especially interesting series of jokes presents the relationship between the poor and the rich Jews: their heroes are the “shnorrer,”[44] and the charitable gentleman or the baron. _The shnorrer, who was a regular Sunday-dinner guest at a certain house, appeared one day accompanied by a young stranger, who prepared to seat himself at the table. “Who is that?” demanded the host. “He became my son-in-law last week,” was the reply, “and I have agreed to supply his board for the first year.”_ The tendency of these stories is always the same, and is most distinctly shown in the following story. _The shnorrer supplicates the baron for money to visit the bathing resort Ostend, as the physician has ordered him to take sea baths for his ailment.
The baron remarks that Ostend is an especially expensive resort, and that a less fashionable place would do just as well. But the shnorrer rejects that proposition by saying, “Herr Baron, nothing is too expensive for my health.”_ That is an excellent displacement-witticism which we could have taken as a model of its kind. The baron is evidently anxious to save his money, but the shnorrer replies as if the baron’s money were his own, which he may then consider secondary to his health. One is forced to laugh at the insolence of the demand, but these jokes are exceptionally unequipped with a façade to becloud the understanding. The truth is that the shnorrer who mentally treats the rich man’s money as his own, really possesses almost the right to this mistake, according to the sacred codes of the Jews. Naturally the resistance which is responsible for this joke is directed against the law which even the pious find very oppressing. Another story relates _how on the steps of a rich man’s house a shnorrer met one of his own kind. The latter counseled him to depart, saying, “Do not go up to-day, the Baron is out of sorts and refuses to give any one more than a dollar.” “I will go up anyway,” replied the first. “Why in the world should I make him, a present of a dollar? Is he making me any presents?”_
This witticism makes use of the technique of absurdity by permitting the shnorrer to declare that the baron gives him nothing at the same moment in which he is preparing to beg him for the donation. But the absurdity is only apparent, for it is almost true that the rich man gives him nothing, since he is obligated by the mandate to give alms, and strictly speaking must be thankful that the shnorrer gives him an opportunity to be charitable. The ordinary, bourgeois conception of alms is at cross-purposes with the religious one; it openly revolts against the religious conception in the _story about the baron who, having been deeply touched by the shnorrer’s tale of woe, rang for his servants and said: “Throw him out of the house; he is breaking my heart.”_ This obvious exposition of the tendency again creates a case of border-line wit. From the no longer witty complaint: “It is really no advantage to be a rich man among Jews. The foreign misery does not grant one the pleasure of one’s own fortune,” these last stories are distinguished only by the illustration of a single situation.
Other stories as the following, which, technically again presenting border-lines of wit, have their origin in a deeply pessimistic cynicism. _A patient whose hearing was defective consulted a physician who made the correct diagnosis, namely, that the patient probably drank too much whiskey and consequently was becoming deaf. He advised him to desist from drinking and the patient promised to follow his advice. Some time thereafter the doctor met him on the street and inquired in a loud voice about his condition. “Thank you, Doctor,” was the reply, “there is no necessity for speaking so loudly, I have given up drinking whiskey and consequently I hear perfectly.” Some time afterwards they met again. The doctor again inquired into his condition in the usual voice, but noticed that he did not make himself understood. “It seems to me that you are deaf again because you have returned to drinking whiskey,” shouted the doctor in the patient’s ear. “Perhaps you are right,” answered the latter, “I have taken to drinking again, and I shall tell you why. As long as I did not drink I could hear, but all that I heard was not as good as the whiskey.”_ Technically this joke is nothing more than an illustration. The jargon and the ability of the _raconteur_ must aid the producing of laughter. But behind it there lies the sad question, “Is not the man right in his choice?”
It is the manifold hopeless misery of the Jews to which these pessimistical stories allude, which urged me to add them to tendency-wit. _Critical and Blasphemous Witticisms_ Other jokes, cynical in a similar sense, and not only stories about Jews, attack religious dogmas and the belief in God Himself. The story about the “telepathic look of the rabbi,” whose technique consisted in the faulty thinking which made phantasy equal to reality, (the conception of displacement is also tenable) is such a cynical or critical witticism directed against miracle-workers and also, surely, against belief in miracles. Heine is reported to have made a directly blasphemous joke as he lay dying. _When the kindly priest commended him to God’s mercy and inspired him with the hope that God would forgive him his sins, he replied: “Bien sûr qu’il me pardonnera; c’est son métier.”_ That is a derogatory comparison; technically its value lies only in the allusion, for a métier—business or vocation—is plied either by a craftsman or a physician, and what is more he has only a single métier. The strength of the wit, however, lies in its tendency. The joke is intended to mean nothing else, but: Certainly he will forgive me; that is what he is here for, and for no other purpose have I engaged him (just as one retains one’s doctor or one’s lawyer). Thus, the helpless dying man is still conscious of the fact that he has created God for himself and has clothed Him with the power in order to make use of Him as occasion arises. The so-called creature makes itself known as the Creator only a short time before his extinction.
_Skeptical Wit_ To the three kinds of tendency-wit discussed so far—exhibitionistic or obscene wit, aggressive or hostile wit, and cynical wit (critical, blasphemous)—I desire to add a fourth and the most uncommon of all, whose character can be elucidated by a good example. _Two Jews met in a train at a Galician railway station. “Where are you traveling?” asked one. “To Cracow,” was the reply. “Now see here, what a liar you are!” said the first one, bristling. “When you say that you are traveling to Cracow, you really wish me to believe that you are traveling to Lemberg. Well, but I am sure that you are really traveling to Cracow, so why lie about it?”_ This precious story, which creates an impression of exaggerated subtlety, evidently operates by means of the technique of absurdity. The second Jew has put himself in the way of being called a liar because he has said that he is traveling to Cracow, which is his real goal! However, this strong technical means—absurdity—is paired here with another technique—representation through the opposite, for, according to the uncontradicted assertion of the first, the second one is lying when he speaks the truth, and speaks the truth by means of a lie. However, the more earnest content of this joke is the question of the conditions of truth; again the joke points to a problem and makes use of the uncertainty of one of our commonest notions. Does it constitute truth if one describes things as they are and does not concern himself with the way the hearers will interpret what one has said? Or is this merely Jesuitical truth, and does not the real truthfulness consist much more in having a regard for the hearer and of furnishing him an exact picture of his own mind? I consider jokes of this type sufficiently different from the others to assign them a special place. What they attack is not a person nor an institution, but the certainty of our very knowledge—one of our speculative gifts. Hence the name “skeptical” witticism will be the most expressive for them.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.