Freud - Complete Works (317 page)

       Poor
dumb beasts have a will -
ergo
a soul too -

      
E’en though they have a soul smaller than we.]

  
²
[ ‘How fortunate am I!’ she
softly cried.

      
‘I too’, declared her husband’s louder
voice:

      
‘Your many qualities fill me with pride

       At
having made so excellent a choice.’]

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1794

   Now that we are on the point of
approaching an answer to our last question, as to the necessary
conditions for the generating of comic pleasure from the difference
in expenditure, we may allow ourselves a relief which cannot fail
to give us pleasure. An accurate reply to the question would be
identical with an exhaustive account of the nature of the comic,
for which we can claim neither capacity nor authority. We shall
once more be content to throw light on the problem of the comic
only so far as it contrasts clearly with the problem of jokes.

   Every theory of the comic is
objected to by its critics on the score that its definition
overlooks what is essential to the comic; ‘The comic is based
on a contrast between ideas.’ ‘Yes, in so far as the
contrast has a comic and not some other effect.’ ‘The
feeling of the comic arises from the disappointment of an
expectation.’ ‘Yes, unless the disappointment is in
fact a distressing one.’ No doubt the objections are
justified; but we shall be over-estimating them if we conclude from
them that the essential feature of the comic has hitherto escaped
detection. What impairs the universal validity of these definitions
are conditions which are indispensable for the generating of comic
pleasure; but we do not need to look for the essence of the comic
in them. In any case, it will only become easy for us to dismiss
the objections and throw light on the contradictions to the
definitions of the comic if we suppose that the origin of comic
pleasure lies in a comparison of the difference between two
expenditures. Comic pleasure and the effect by which it is known -
laughter - can only come about if this difference is unutilizable
and capable of discharge. We obtain no pleasurable effect but at
most a transient sense of pleasure in which the characteristic of
being comic does not emerge, if the difference is put to another
use as soon as it is recognized. Just as special contrivances have
to be adopted in the case of jokes in order to prevent the use
elsewhere of the expenditure that is recognized as superfluous, so,
too, comic pleasure can only appear in circumstances that guarantee
this same condition. For this reason occasions on which these
differences in expenditure occur in our ideational life are
uncommonly numerous, but the occasions on which the comic emerges
from those differences are relatively quite rare.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1795

   Two observations force themselves
on anyone who studies even cursorily the conditions for the
generation of the comic from difference in expenditure. Firstly,
there are cases in which the comic appears habitually and as though
by force of necessity, and on the contrary others in which it seems
entirely dependent on the circumstances and on the standpoint of
the observer. But secondly, unusually large differences very often
break through unfavourable conditions, so that the comic feeling
emerges in spite of them. In connection with the first of these
points it would be possible to set up two classes - the inevitably
comic and the occasionally comic - though one must be prepared from
the first to renounce the notion of finding the inevitability of
the comic in the first class free from exceptions. It would be
tempting to enquire into the determining conditions for the two
classes.

   The conditions, some of which
have been brought together as the ‘isolation’ of the
comic situation, apply essentially to the second class. A closer
analysis elicits the following facts:

   (
a
) The most favourable
condition for the production of comic pleasure is a generally
cheerful mood in which one is ‘inclined to laugh’. In a
toxic mood of cheerfulness almost everything seems comic, probably
by comparison with the expenditure in a normal state. Indeed,
jokes, the comic and all similar methods of getting pleasure from
mental activity are no more than ways of regaining this cheerful
mood - this euphoria - from a single point of approach, when it is
not present as a general disposition of the psyche.

   (
b
) A similarly favourable
effect is produced by an
expectation
of the comic, by being
attuned to comic pleasure. For this reason, if an intention to make
something comic is communicated to one by someone else, differences
of such a low degree are sufficient that they would probably be
overlooked if they occurred in one’s experience
unintentionally. Anyone who starts out to read a comic book or goes
to the theatre to see a farce owes to this intention his ability to
laugh at things which would scarcely have provided him with a case
of the comic in his ordinary life. In the last resort it is in the
recollection of having laughed and in the expectation of laughing
that he laughs when he sees the comic actor come on to the stage,
before the latter can have made any attempt at making him laugh.
For that reason, too, one admits feeling ashamed afterwards over
what one has been able to laugh at the play.

   (
c
) Unfavourable
conditions for the comic arise from the kind of mental activity
with which a particular person is occupied at the moment.
Imaginative or intellectual work that pursues serious aims
interferes with the capacity of the cathexes for discharge -
cathexes which the work requires for its displacements - so that
only unexpectedly large differences in expenditure are able to
break through to comic pleasure. What are quite specially
unfavourable for the comic are all kinds of intellectual processes
which are sufficiently remote from what is perceptual to bring
ideational mimetics to a stop. There is no place whatever left for
the comic in abstract reflection except when that mode of thought
is suddenly interrupted.

   (
d
) The opportunity for
the release of comic pleasure disappears, too, if the attention is
focused precisely on the comparison from which the comic may
emerge. In such circumstances what would otherwise have the most
certain comic effect loses its comic force. A movement or a
function cannot be comic for a person whose interest is directed to
comparing it with a standard which he has clearly before his mind.
Thus the examiner does not find the nonsense comic which the
candidate produces in his ignorance; he is annoyed by it, while the
candidate’s fellow students, who are far more interested in
what luck he will have than in how much he knows, laugh heartily at
the same nonsense. A gymnastic or dancing instructor seldom has an
eye for the comic in his pupils’ movements; and a clergyman
entirely overlooks the comic in the human weaknesses which the
writer of comedies can bring to light so effectively. The comic
process will not bear being hypercathected by attention; it must be
able to take its course quite unobserved in this respect,
incidentally, just like jokes. It would, however, contradict the
nomenclature of the ‘processes of consciousness’ of
which I made use, with good reason, in my
Interpretation of
Dreams
if one sought to speak of the comic process as a
necessarily unconscious one. It forms part, rather, of the
preconscious; and such processes, which run their course in the
preconscious but lack the cathexis of attention with which
consciousness is linked, may aptly be given the name of
‘automatic’. The process of comparing expenditures must
remain automatic if it is to produce comic pleasure.

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1796

   (
e
) The comic is greatly
interfered with if the situation from which it ought to develop
gives rise at the same time to a release of strong affect. A
discharge of the operative difference is as a rule out of the
question in such a case. The affects, disposition and attitude of
the individual in each particular case make it understandable that
the comic emerges and vanishes according to the standpoint of each
particular person, and that an absolute comic exists only in
exceptional instances. The contingency or relativity of the comic
is therefore far greater than that of a joke, which never happens
of its own accord but is invariably
made
, and in which the
conditions under which it can find acceptance can be observed at
the time at which it is constructed. The generation of affect is
the most intense of all the conditions that interfere with the
comic and its importance in this respect has been nowhere
overlooked.¹ For this reason it has been said that the comic
feeling comes easiest in more or less indifferent cases where the
feelings and interests are not strongly involved. Yet precisely in
cases where there is a release of affect one can observe a
particularly strong difference in expenditure bring about the
automatism of release. When Colonel Butler answers Octavio’s
warnings by exclaiming ‘with a bitter laugh’:
‘
Thanks
from the House of Austria!’, his
embitterment does not prevent his laughing. The laugh applies to
his memory of the disappointment he believes he has suffered; and
on the other hand the magnitude of the disappointment cannot be
portrayed more impressively by the dramatist than by his showing it
capable of forcing a laugh in the midst of the storm of feelings
that have been released. I am inclined to think that this
explanation would apply to every case in which laughter occurs in
circumstances other than pleasurable ones and accompanied by
intensely distressing or strained emotions.

   (
f
) If we add to this that
the generating of comic pleasure can be encouraged by any other
pleasurable accompanying circumstance as though by some sort of
contagious effect (working in the same kind of way as the
fore-pleasure principle with tendentious jokes), we shall have
mentioned enough of the conditions governing comic pleasure for our
purposes, though certainly not all of them. We can then see that
these conditions, as well as the inconstancy and contingency of the
comic effect, cannot be explained so easily by any other hypothesis
than that of the derivation of comic pleasure from the discharge of
a difference which, under the most varying circumstances, is liable
to be used in ways other than discharge.

  
¹
‘It is easy for you to laugh; it
means nothing more to you.’

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1797

   The comic of sexuality and
obscenity would deserve more detailed consideration; but we can
only touch upon it here with a few comments. The starting-point
would once more be exposure. A chance exposure has a comic effect
on us because we compare the ease with which we have enjoyed the
sight with the great expenditure which would otherwise be required
for reaching this end. Thus the case approaches that of the
naïvely comic, but is simpler. Every exposure of which we are
made the spectator (or audience in the case of smut) by a third
person is equivalent to the exposed person being made comic. We
have seen that it is the task of jokes to take the place of smut
and so once more to open access to a lost source of comic pleasure.
As opposed to this, witnessing an exposure is not a case of the
comic for the witness, because his own effort in doing so does away
with the determining condition of comic pleasure: nothing is left
but the sexual pleasure in what is seen. If the witness gives an
account to someone else, the person who has been witnessed becomes
comic once more, because there is a predominant sense that the
latter has omitted the expenditure which would have been in place
for concealing his secret. Apart from this, the spheres of
sexuality and obscenity offer the amplest occasions for obtaining
comic pleasure alongside pleasurable sexual excitement; for they
can show human beings in their dependence on bodily needs
(degradation) or they can reveal the physical demands lying behind
the claim of mental love (unmasking).

Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscious

1798

   An invitation to us to look for
an understanding of the comic in its psychogenesis is also to be
found, surprisingly enough, in Bergson’s charming and lively
volume
Le rire
. We have already made the acquaintance of
Bergson’s formulas for grasping the characteristics of the
comic: ‘
mécanisation de la vie
’,
‘
substitution quelconque de l’artificial au
naturel
’.¹ He proceeds by a plausible train of
thought from automatism to automata, and tries to trace back a
number of comic effects to the faded recollection of a
children’s toy. In this connection he reaches for a moment a
point of view, which, it is true, he soon abandons: he endeavours
to explain the comic as an after-effect of the joys of childhood.
‘Peut-être même devrions-nous pousser la
simplification plus loin encore, remonter à nos souvenirs
les plus anciens, chercher dans les jeux qui amusèrent
l’enfant la première ébauche des combinaisons
qui font rire l’homme . . . Trop souvent
surtout nous méconnaissons ce qu’il y a d’encore
enfantin, pour ainsi dire, dans la plupart de nos émotions
joyeuses.’ (Bergson, 1900, 68 ff.)² Since we have traced
back jokes to children’s play with words and thoughts which
has been frustrated by rational criticism we cannot help feeling
tempted to investigate the infantile roots which Bergson suspects
in the case of the comic as well.