Freud - Complete Works (304 page)

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1727

   We are now able to state the
formula for the mode of operation of tendentious jokes. They put
themselves at the service of purposes in order that, by means of
using the pleasure from jokes as a fore-pleasure, they may produce
new pleasure by lifting suppressions and repressions. If now we
survey the course of development of the joke, we may say that from
its beginning to its perfecting it remains true to its essential
nature. It begins as play, in order to derive pleasure from the
free use of words and thoughts. As soon as the strengthening of
reasoning puts an end to this play with words as being senseless,
and with thoughts as being nonsensical, it changes into a jest, in
order that it may retain these sources of pleasure and be able to
achieve fresh pleasure from the liberation of nonsense. Next, as a
joke proper, but still a non-tendentious one, it gives its
assistance to thoughts and strengthens them against the challenge
of critical judgement, a process in which the ‘principle of
confusion of sources of pleasure’ is of use to it. And
finally it comes to the help of major purposes which are combating
suppression, in order to lift their internal inhibitions by the
‘principle of fore-pleasure’. Reason, critical
judgement, suppression - these are the forces against which it
fights in succession; it holds fast to the original sources of
verbal pleasure and, from the stage of the jest onwards, opens new
sources of pleasure for itself by lifting inhibitions. The pleasure
that it produces, whether it is pleasure in play or pleasure in
lifting inhibitions, can invariably be traced back to economy in
psychical expenditure, provided that this view does not contradict
the essential nature of pleasure and that it proves itself fruitful
in other directions.¹

  
¹
Nonsense jokes, which have not had due
attention paid to them in my account, deserve some supplementary
consideration.

   The
importance which our views attach to the factor of ‘sense in
nonsense’ might lead to a demand that every joke must be a
nonsense joke. But this is not necessary, because it is only
playing with
thoughts
that inevitably leads to nonsense; the
other source of pleasure in jokes, playing with
words
, only
gives that impression occasionally and does not invariably provoke
the implied criticism. The twofold root of the pleasure in jokes -
from playing with words and playing with thoughts, which
corresponds to the very important distinction between verbal and
conceptual jokes - makes it perceptibly more difficult to arrive at
a concise formulation of general statements about jokes. Playing
with words produces manifest pleasure as a result of the factors
that have been enumerated above (recognition, and so on), and is
consequently only to a small degree liable to suppression. Playing
with thoughts cannot have its motive in this kind of pleasure; it
meets with very energetic suppression, and the pleasure which it
can yield is only pleasure in the lifting of an inhibition. It can
accordingly be said that the pleasure in jokes exhibits a core of
original pleasure in play and a casing of pleasure in lifting
inhibitions. - We naturally do not perceive that our pleasure in a
nonsense joke arises from our having succeeded in liberating a
piece of nonsense in spite of its suppression; whereas we see
directly that playing with words has given us pleasure. - The
nonsense that still remains in a conceptual joke acquires
secondarily the function of increasing our attention by bewildering
us. It serves as a means of intensifying the effect of the joke,
but only when it acts obtrusively, so that the bewilderment can
hurry ahead of the understanding by a perceptible moment of time.
The examples on
p. 1659 ff.
have
shown that in addition to this, nonsense in a joke can be used to
represent a judgement contained in the thought. But this, too, is
not the primary significance of nonsense in jokes.

  
[
Added
1912:] A number of productions resembling jokes can
be classed alongside of nonsense jokes. There is no appropriate
name for them, but they might well be described as ‘idiocy
masquerading as a joke’. There are countless numbers of them,
and I will only select two samples:

  
‘A man at the dinner table who was being handed fish dipped
his two hands twice in the mayonnaise and then ran them through his
hair. When his neighbour looked at him in astonishment, he seemed
to notice his mistake and apologized: "I’m so sorry, I
thought it was spinach."'

   Or:
‘"Life is a suspension bridge", said one man. -
"Why is that?" asked the other. - "How should
I
know?" was the reply.’

  
These extreme examples have an effect because they rouse the
expectation of a joke, so that one tries to find a concealed sense
behind the nonsense. But one finds none: they really are nonsense.
The pretence makes it possible for a moment to liberate the
pleasure in nonsense. These jokes are not entirely without a
purpose; they are a ‘take-in’, and give the person who
tells them a certain amount of pleasure in misleading and annoying
his hearer. The latter then damps down his annoyance by determining
to tell them himself later on.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1728

V

THE
MOTIVES OF JOKES - JOKES AS A SOCIAL PROCESS

It might seem superfluous to talk about the
motives of jokes, since the aim of getting pleasure must be
recognized as a sufficient motive for the joke-work. But on the one
hand the possibility cannot be excluded of other motives as well
having a share in the production of jokes, and on the other hand,
bearing in mind some familiar experiences, we must raise the
general question of the subjective determinants of jokes.

   Two facts in particular make this
necessary. Although the joke-work is an excellent method of getting
pleasure out of psychical processes, it is nevertheless evident
that not everyone is equally capable of making use of that method,
the joke-work is not at everyone’s command, and altogether
only a few people have a plentiful amount of it; and these are
distinguished by being spoken of as having ‘wit’
[
Witz
]. ‘Wit’ appears in this connection as a
special capacity - rather in the class of the old mental
‘faculties’; and it seems to emerge fairly
independently of the others, such as intelligence, imagination,
memory, etc. We must therefore presume the presence in these
‘witty’ people of special inherited dispositions or
psychical determinants which permit or favour the joke-work.

   I fear that we shall not get very
far in exploring this question. We can only succeed here and there
in advancing from an understanding of a particular joke to a
knowledge of the subjective determinants in the mind of the person
who made it. It is a remarkable coincidence that precisely the
example of the joke on which we began our investigations of the
technique of jokes also gives us a glimpse into the subjective
determinants of jokes. I refer to Heine’s joke, which has
also been considered by Heymans and Lipps:

   ‘. . . I sat beside Salomon
Rothschild and he treated me quite as his equal - quite
famillionairely.’ (‘Bäder von Lucca.’)

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1729

   Heine puts this remark into the
mouth of a comic character, Hirsch-Hyacinth, a Hamburg
lottery-agent, extractor of corns and professional valuer, the
valet of the aristocratic Baron Gristoforo Gumpelino (formerly
Gumpel). The poet evidently takes the greatest satisfaction in this
creation of his, for he makes Hirsch-Hyacinth into a great talker
and gives him the most amusing and plain-spoken speeches, and even
lets him display the practical philosophy of a Sancho Panza. It is
a pity that Heine, who seems to have had no taste for dramatic
construction, dropped this delightful character so soon. There are
not a few passages in which the poet himself seems to be speaking,
under a thing disguise, through the mouth of Hirsch-Hyacinth, and
it soon becomes a certainty that this character is only a
self-parody. Hirsch explains his reasons for having given up his
former name and why he now calls himself ‘Hyacinth’. He
goes on: ‘There’s the further advantage that I already
have an "H" on my signet, so that I don’t need to
have a new one cut.’ But Heine himself effected the same
economy when, at his baptism, he changed his first name from
‘Harry’ to ‘Heinrich’. Everyone, too, who
is familiar with the poet’s biography, will recall that Heine
had an uncle of the same name in Hamburg (a place which provides
another connection with the figure of Hirsch-Hyacinth) who, as the
rich man of the family, played a large part in his life. This uncle
was also called ‘Salomon’, just like the old Rothschild
who treated Hirsch so famillionairely. What seemed in
Hirsch-Hyacinth’s mouth no more than a jest soon reveals a
background of serious bitterness if we ascribe it to the nephew,
Harry-Heinrich. After all, he was one of the family, and we know
that he had a burning wish to marry a daughter of this
uncle’s; but his cousin rejected him, and his uncle always
treated him a little famillionairely, as a poor relation. His rich
cousins in Hamburg never took him seriously. I recall a story told
by an old aunt of my own, who had married into the Heine family,
how one day, when she was an attractive young woman, she found
sitting next her at the family dinner-table a person who struck her
as uninviting and whom the rest of the company treated
contemptuously. She herself felt no reason to be any more affable
towards him. It was only many years later that she realized that
this negligent and neglected cousin had been the poet Heinrich
Heine. There is not a little evidence to show how much Heine
suffered both in his youth and later from this rejection by his
rich relations. It was from the soil of this subjective emotion
that the ‘famillionairely’ joke sprang.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1730

   The presence of similar
subjective determinants may be suspected in some other of the great
scoffer’s jokes; but I know of no other one in which this can
be demonstrated so convincingly. For this reason it is not easy to
try to make any more definite statement about the nature of these
personal determinants. Indeed, we shall be disinclined in general
to claim such complicated determinants for the origin of every
individual joke. Nor are the jokes produced by other famous men any
more easily accessible to our examination. We get an impression
that the subjective determinants of the joke-work are often not far
removed from those of neurotic illness - when we learn, for
instance, of Lichtenberg that he was a severely hypochrondriacal
man, with all kinds of eccentricities. The great majority of jokes,
and especially those that are constantly being newly produced in
connection with the events of the day, are circulated anonymously;
one would be curious to learn from what sort of people such
productions originate. If one has occasion as doctor to make the
acquaintance of one of those people who, though not remarkable in
other ways, are well known in their circle as jokers and the
originators of many viable jokes, one may be surprised to discover
that the joker is a disunited personality, disposed to neurotic
disorders. The insufficiency of documentary evidence, however, will
certainly prevent our setting up a hypothesis that a psychoneurotic
constitution of this kind is a habitual or necessary subjective
condition for the construction of jokes.

   A more transparent case is
offered, once more, by the Jewish jokes, which, as I have already
mentioned (
p. 1705
), are ordinarily
made by Jews themselves, while the anecdotes about them from other
sources scarcely ever rise above the level of comic stories or of
brutal derision. What determines their participating in the jokes
themselves seems to be the same as in the case of Heine’s
‘famillionairely’ joke; and its significance seems to
lie in the fact that the person concerned finds criticism or
aggressiveness difficult so long as they are direct, and possible
only along circuitous paths.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1731

   Other subjective factors which
determine or favour the joke-work are less wrapped in obscurity.
The motive force for the production of innocent jokes is not
infrequently an ambitious urge to show one’s cleverness, to
display oneself - an instinct that may be equated with
exhibitionism in the sexual field. The presence of numerous
inhibited instincts, whose suppression has retained a certain
degree of instability, will provide the most favourable disposition
for the production of tendentious jokes. Thus individual components
of a person’s sexual constitution in particular, can appear
as motives for the construction of a joke. A whole class of obscene
jokes allows one to infer the presence of a concealed inclination
to exhibitionism in their inventors; aggressive tendentious jokes
succeed best in people in whose sexuality a powerful sadistic
component is demonstrable, which is more or less inhibited in real
life.

   The second fact which makes an
enquiry into the subjective determination of jokes necessary is the
generally recognized experience that no one can be content with
having made a joke for himself alone. An urge to tell the joke to
someone is inextricably bound up with the joke-work; indeed, this
urge is so strong that often enough it is carried through in
disregard of serious misgivings. In the case of the comic as well,
telling it to someone else produces enjoyment; but the demand is
not peremptory. If one comes across something comic, one can enjoy
it by oneself. A joke, on the contrary,
must
be told to
someone else. The psychical process of constructing a joke seems
not to be completed when the joke occurs to one: something remains
over which seeks, by communicating the idea, to bring the unknown
process of constructing the joke to a conclusion.