Freud - Complete Works (286 page)

   Another, very well-known joke of
Herr N.’s offers a neat example of condensation with slight
modification. He remarked of a personage in public life: ‘he
has a great future behind him.’ The man to whom this joke
referred was comparatively young, and he had seemed destined by his
birth, education and personal qualities to succeed in the future to
the leadership of a great political party and to enter the
government at its head. But times changed; the party became
inadmissible as a government, and it could be foreseen that the man
who had been predestined to be its leader would come to nothing as
well. The shortest reduced version by which this joke could be
replaced would run: ‘The man has had a great future before
him, but he has it no longer.’ Instead of the
‘had’ and the second clause, there was merely the small
change made in the principal clause of replacing
‘before’ by its contrary,
‘behind’.¹

  
¹
There is another factor operating in the
technique of this joke which I reserve for later discussion. It
concerns the actual nature of the modification (representation by
the opposite or by something absurd). There is nothing to prevent
the joke-technique from simultaneously employing several methods;
but these we can only get to know one by one.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1633

   Herr N. made use of almost the
same modification in the case of a gentleman who became Minister
for Agriculture with the sole qualification of being himself a
farmer. Public opinion had occasion to recognize that he was the
least gifted holder of the office that there had ever been. When he
had resigned his office and retired to his farming interests, Herr
N. said of him, ‘Like Cincinnatus, he has gone back to his
place before the plough.’

   The Roman, however, who had also
been called away to office from the plough, returned to his place
behind
the plough. What went
before
the plough, both
then and to-day, was only - an ox.¹

   Karl Kraus was responsible for
another successful condensation with slight modification. He wrote
of a certain yellow-press journalist that he had travelled to one
of the Balkan States by
‘
Orienterpresszug
’.² There is no doubt that
this word combines two others: ‘
Orientexpresszug
[Orient Express]’ and ‘
Erpressung
[blackmail]’. Owing to the context, the element
‘
Erpressung
’ emerges only as a modification of
the ‘
Orientexpresszug
’ - a word called for by
the verb [‘travelled’]. This joke, which presents
itself in the guise of a misprint, has yet another claim on our
interest.

   This series of examples could
easily be further increased; but I do not think we require any
fresh instances to enable us to grasp clearly the characteristics
of the technique in this second group - condensation with
modification. If we compare the second group with the first, whose
technique consisted in condensation with the formation of composite
words, we shall easily see that the difference between them is not
an essential one and that the transitions between them are fluid.
Both the formation of composite words and modification can be
subsumed under the concept of the formation of substitutes; and, if
we care to, we can also describe the formation of a composite word
as a modification of the basic word by a second element.

  
¹
[‘
Ochs
’ in German has
much the same meaning as ‘ass’ in English.]

  
²
[A non-existent word.]

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1634

   But here we may make a first stop
and ask ourselves with what factor known to us from the literature
of the subject this first finding of ours coincides, wholly or in
part. Evidently with the factor of brevity, which Jean Paul
describes as ‘the soul of wit’ (
p. 1619
above). But brevity does not in
itself constitute a joke, or otherwise every laconic remark would
be one. The joke’s brevity must be of a particular kind. It
will be recalled that Lipps has tried to describe this particular
brevity of jokes more precisely (
p. 1619
). Here our investigation
contributes something and shows that the brevity of jokes is often
the outcome of a particular process which has left behind in the
wording of the joke a second trace - the formation of a substitute.
By making use of the procedure of reduction, which seeks to undo
the peculiar process of condensation, we also find, however, that
the joke depends entirely on its verbal expression as established
by the process of condensation. Our whole interest now turns, of
course, to this strange process, which has hitherto scarcely been
examined. Nor can we in the least understand how all that is
valuable in a joke, the yield of pleasure that the joke brings us,
can originate from that process.

   Are processes similar to those
which we have described here as the technique of jokes known
already in any other field of mental events? They are - in a single
field, and an apparently very remote one. In 1900 I published a
book which, as its title (
The Interpretation of Dreams
)
indicates, attempted to throw light on what is puzzling in dreams
and to establish them as derivatives of our normal mental
functioning. I found occasion there to contrast the
manifest
, and often strange,
content of the dream
with the
latent
, but perfectly logical,
dream-thoughts
from which the dream is derived; and I
entered into an investigation of the processes which make the dream
out of the latent dream-thoughts, as well as of the psychical
forces which are involved in that transformation. To the totality
of these transforming processes I gave the name of the
‘dream-work’; and I have described as a part of this
dream-work a process of condensation which shows the greatest
similarity to the one found in the technique of jokes - which, like
it, leads to abbreviation, and creates substitute-formations of the
same character. Everyone will be familiar, from a recollection of
his own dreams, with the composite structures both of people and of
things which emerge in dreams. Indeed, dreams even construct them
out of words, and they can then be dissected in analysis. (For
instance, ‘Autodidasker’ = ‘Autodidakt’ +
‘Lasker’.) On other occasions - much more often, in
fact - what the work of condensation in dreams produces is not
composite structures but pictures which exactly resemble one thing
or one person except for an addition or alteration derived from
another source - modifications, that is, just like those in Herr
N.’s jokes. We cannot doubt that in both cases we are faced
by the same psychical process, which we may recognize from its
identical results. Such a far-reaching analogy between the
technique of jokes and the dream-work will undoubtedly increase our
interest in the former and raise an expectation in us that a
comparison between jokes and dreams may help to throw light on
jokes. But we will refrain from entering upon this task, for we
must reflect that so far we have investigated the technique of only
a very small number of jokes, so that we cannot tell whether the
analogy by which we are proposing to be guided will in fact hold
good. We will therefore turn away from the comparison with dreams
and go back to the technique of jokes, though at this point we
shall, as it were, be leaving a loose end to our enquiry, which at
some later stage we may perhaps pick up once more.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1635

   The first thing that we want to
learn is whether the process of condensation with
substitute-formation is to be discovered in every joke, and can
therefore be regarded as a universal characteristic of the
technique of jokes.

   Here I recall a joke which has
remained in my memory owing to the special circumstances in which I
heard it. One of the great teachers of my young days, whom we
thought incapable of appreciating a joke and from whom we had never
heard a joke of his own, came into the Institute one day laughing,
and, more readily than usual, explained to us what it was that had
caused his cheerful mood. ‘I have just read an excellent
joke’, he said. ‘A young man was introduced into a
Paris
salon
, who was a relative of the great Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and bore his name. Moreover he was red-haired. But he
behaved so awkwardly that the hostess remarked critically to the
gentleman who had introduced him: "Vous m’avez fait
connaître un jeune homme
roux
et
sot
, mais non
pas un
Rousseau
."'¹ And he laughed again.

   By the nomenclature of the
authorities this would be classed as a
‘
Klangwitz
’,² and one of an inferior sort,
with a play upon a proper name - not unlike the joke, for instance,
in the Capuchin monk’s sermon in
Wallensteins Lager
,
which, as is well known, is modelled on the style of Abraham a
Santa Clara:

                                                               
Lässt sich nennen den
Wallenstein
,

                                                               
ja freilich ist er uns
allen
ein
Stein

                                                               
des Anstosses und Ärgernisses.
³

   But what is the technique of this
joke? We see at once that the characteristic that we may have hoped
to be able to prove was a universal one is absent on the very first
fresh occasion. There is no omission here, and scarcely an
abbreviation. The lady herself says straight out in the joke almost
everything that we can attribute to her thoughts. ‘You had
raised my expectations about a relative of Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
perhaps a spiritual relative - and here he is: a red-haired silly
young man, a
roux et sot
.’ It is true that I have been
able to make an interpolation; but this attempt at a reduction has
not got rid of the joke. It remains, and is attached to the
identity of sound of the words

ROSSEAU

—————

ROUX
SOT                                                                  
   

It thus proved that condensation with
substitute-formation has no share in the production of this
joke.

  
¹
[‘You have made me acquainted with a
young man who is
roux
(red-haired) and
sot
(silly),
but not a Rousseau.’ ‘
Roux-sot
’ would be
pronounced exactly like ‘
Rousseau
’.]

  
²
[‘Sound-joke.’]

  
³
[Literally: ‘He gets himself called
Wallenstein, and indeed he is for
allen
(all) of us a
Stein
(stone) of offence and trouble.’] -
Nevertheless, as a result of another factor, this joke deserves to
be more highly thought of. But this can only be indicated later
on.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1636

   What besides? Fresh attempts at
reduction can teach me that the joke remains resistant until the
name ‘Rousseau’ is replaced by another. If, for
instance, I put ‘Racine’ instead of it, the
lady’s criticism, which remains just as possible as before,
loses every trace of being a joke. I now know where I have to look
for the technique of this joke, though I may still hesitate over
formulating it. I will try this: the technique of the joke lies in
the fact that one and the same word - the name - appears in it
used in two ways
, once as a whole, and again cut up into its
separate syllables like a charade.

   I can bring up a few examples
which have an identical technique.

   An Italian lady is said to have
revenged herself for a tactless remark of the first
Napoleon’s with a joke having this same technique of the
double use of a word. At a court ball, he said to her, pointing to
her fellow countrymen: ‘Tutti gli Italiani danzano si
male.’ To which she made the quick repartee: ‘Non
tutti, ma buona parte.’¹ (Brill, 1911.)

   Once when the
Antigone
was
produced in Berlin, the critics complained that the production was
lacking in the proper character of antiquity. Berlin wit made the
criticism its own in the following words: ‘
Antik? Oh,
nee.
’² (Vischer, 1846-57,
1
, 429, and
Fischer, 1889.)

   An analogous dividing-up joke is
at home in medical circles. If one enquires from a youthful patient
whether he has ever had anything to do with masturbation, the
answer is sure to be: ‘O na, nie!’³

  
¹
[‘All Italians dance so badly!’
‘Not all, but
buona parte
(a good part)' - the
original, Italian version of Napoleon’s surname.]

  
²
[‘Antique? Oh, no.’ The words,
in Berlin dialect, approximate in pronunciation to
‘Antigone’.]

  
³
[‘Oh, no, never!’
‘
Onanie
(onanism)' is the common German word for
‘masturbation’.]

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1637

   In all three of these examples,
which should suffice for this species, we see the same
joke-technique: in each of them a name is used twice, once as a
whole and again divided up into its separate syllables, which, when
they are thus separated, give another sense.¹