Wit and its relation to the unconscious · Sigmund Freud
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Winslow, 45 Wish fulfilment, 249, 253 Wit, 4 and comic, 4, 330 and dreams, 249, 273, 285 and rebellion against authority, 153 as an inspiration, 265 as a social process, 214 by word-division, 32 definitions of, 6, 7, 8 desire to impart it, 239 double-facedness of, 240 harmless, 128 hostile and obscene, 138 in the service of tendencies, 146 ironical, 100 its motives, 214 its subjective determinations, 155 its tendencies, 127 Wit, literature of, 134 outdoing, 96, 97 pleasure mechanisms of, 177, 230 psychogenesis of, 177, 195, 200 shallow, 131 skeptical, 172, 173 technique of, 14, 194, 240 Wit-work, its formula, 261 Witticism and riddle, 232 critical, 171 Witticisms, blasphemous, 171 Witty nonsense, 211, 212 Woman, unyieldingness of, 143 Word-division, 32, 33, 34 Word-pleasure, 190 Word-wit, 128, 131 ----- Footnote 1: Monograph Series, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Pub. Co., 2nd Ed., 1912. Footnote 2: Monograph Series, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Pub. Co., 2nd Ed., 1916. Footnote 3: The Macmillan Co., New York, and Allen & Unwin, London. Footnote 4: The Macmillan Co., New York, and T. Fisher Unwin, London. Footnote 5: This expression is used advisedly in order to distinguish it from other methods of “analysis,” which Professor Freud fully disavows. Cf. _The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement_, translated by A. A. Brill, _The Psychoanalytic Review_, June-Sept., 1916.
Footnote 6: Cf. the works of Freud, Abraham, Rank, and others. Footnote 7: Cf. Freud: _Totem and Taboo_, a translation in preparation, and the works of Jones, Rank and Sachs, Jung, and Storfer. Footnote 8: Cf. Freud, Berny, Rank, and Sachs, and Sperber. Footnote 9: Cf. Freud: _Leonardo da Vinci_, a translation in preparation, and the works of many others. Footnote 10: Cf. _v._ Hug-Hellmuth: _Aus dem Seelenleben des Kindes_, and the works of Jones, Pfister, and many others. Footnote 11: Cf. the works of Freud, Putnam, Hitschmann, Winterstein, and others. Footnote 12: _Beiträge zur Aesthetik_, edited by Theodor Lipps and Richard Maria Werner, VI,—a book to which I am indebted for the courage and capacity to undertake this attempt. Footnote 13: J. V. Falke: _Lebenserinnerungen_, 1897. Footnote 14: Since this joke will occupy us again and we do not wish to disturb the discussion following here, we shall find occasion later to point out a correction in Lipps’s given interpretation which follows our own. Footnote 15: The same holds true for Lipps’s interpretation. Footnote 16: _Psychanalysis_: Its Theories and Application, 2nd Ed., p. 331. Footnote 17: This same witticism was supposed to have been coined before by Heine concerning Alfred de Musset. Footnote 18: One of the complications involved in the technique of this example lies in the fact that the modification through which the omitted abuse is substituted is to be taken as an allusion to the latter, for it leads to it only through a process of deduction.
Footnote 19: Another factor which I shall mention later on is also effective in the technique of this witticism. It has to do with the inner character of the modification (representation through the opposite—contradiction). The technique of wit does not hesitate to make use simultaneously of several means, with which, however, we can only become acquainted in their sequential order. Footnote 20: Translation of 4th Ed. by A. A. Brill, the Macmillan Co., New York, and Allen & Unwin, London. Footnote 21: _The Interpretation of Dreams_, p. 280. Footnote 22: Cited by Brill: _Psychanalysis_, p. 335. Footnote 23: l. c., p. 334. Footnote 24: The excellence of these jokes depends upon the fact that they, at the same time, present another technical means of a much higher order. Footnote 25: Given by Translator. Footnote 26: This resembles an excellent joke of Oliver Wendell Holmes cited by Brill: “Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.” A contradiction is here announced which does not appear. At all events it is a good example of the untranslatableness of the witticisms of such technique. Footnote 27: Brill cites a very analogous modification wit: _Amantes—Amentes_ (lovers—lunatics). Footnote 28: Compare here K. Fischer (p. 85), who applies the term “double meaning” to those witticisms in which both meanings are not equally prominent, but where one overshadows the other. I have applied this term differently. Such a nomenclature is a matter of choice. Usage of speech has rendered no definite decision about them.
If I may be permitted to anticipate what later is discussed in the text I can here throw some light upon the condition which seems to be authoritative in the usage of language when it is a question of calling a joke “good” or “poor.” If by means of a double meaning or slightly modified word I have gotten from one idea to another by a short route, and if this does not also simultaneously result in senseful association between the two ideas, then I have made a “poor” joke. In this poor joke one word or the “point” forms the only existing association between the two widely separated ideas. The joke “Home-Roulard” used above is such an example. But a “good” joke results if the infantile expectation is right in the end and if with the similarity of the word another essential similarity in meaning is really simultaneously produced—as in the examples Traduttore—Traditore (translator—traitor), and Amantes—Amentes (lovers—lunatics). The two disparate ideas which are here linked by an outer association are held together besides by a senseful connection which expresses an important relationship between them. The outer association only replaces the inner connection; it serves to indicate the latter or to clarify it. Not only does “translator” sound somewhat similar to “traitor,” but he is a sort of a traitor whose claims to that name are good. The same may be said of Amantes—Amentes. Not only do the words bear a resemblance, but the similarity between “love” and “lunacy” has been noted from time immemorial.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.