Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious

Part 1

WIT AND ITS RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS

PROFESSOR DR. SIGMUND FREUD, LL.D.

Authorized English Edition, with Introduction by A. A. BRILL, PH.B., M.D.

Lecturer in Psychoanalysis and Abnormal Psychology, New York University; former Chief of Clinic of Psychiatry, Columbia University

NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 1916

Copyright, 1916, BY MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY NEW YORK

All Rights Reserved

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

In 1908 when it was agreed between Professor Freud and myself that I should be his translator, it was decided to render into English first the following five works: Selected Papers on Hysteria and Psychoneuroses, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, The Interpretation of Dreams, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and the present volume. These works were selected because they represent the various stages of development of Professor Freud’s Psychoanalysis, and also because it was thought that they contain the material which one must master before one is able to judge correctly the author’s theories or apply them in practice. This undertaking, which was fraught with many linguistic and other difficulties, has finally been accomplished with the edition of the present volume, and it is therefore with a sense of great satisfaction that the translator’s preface to this work is written. But although the original task is finished the translator’s work is only beginning. Psychoanalysis has made enormous strides. On the foundation laid by Professor Freud there developed a literature rich in ideas and content which has revolutionized the science of nervous and mental diseases, and has thrown much light on the subject of dreams, sex, mythology, the history of civilization and racial psychology, philology, æsthetics, child psychology and pedagogics, philology, and mysticism and occultism. With the Interpretation of Dreams and Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Professor Freud has definitely bridged the gulf between normal and abnormal mental states by demonstrating that dreams and faulty acts like some forms of forgetting, slips of the tongue, slips of reading, writing, etc., are closely allied to psychopathological states and represent the prototypes of such abnormal mental conditions as neurotic symptoms, hallucinations, and deliria. He also shows that all these productions are senseful and purposive, and that their strange and peculiar appearance is due to distortions produced by various psychic processes. These views are confirmed in the present volume, where it is demonstrated that wit, which belongs to æsthetics, is subject to the same laws, shows the same mechanism, and serves the same tendencies as the other psychic productions. With his wonted profundity and ingenuity the author adds the solution of wit to those of the neuroses, dreams, and psychopathological acts.

I take great pleasure in tendering my thanks to Mr. Horatio Winslow, who has read the manuscript and has given me valuable suggestions in the choice of expressions and in the selection of substitutes for those witticisms that could not be translated.

A. A. BRILL.

May, 1916.

CONTENTS

A. ANALYSIS OF WIT CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION 3 II. THE TECHNIQUE OF WIT 15 III. THE TENDENCIES OF WIT 127

B. SYNTHESIS OF WIT IV. THE PLEASURE MECHANISM AND THE PSYCHOGENESIS OF WIT 177 V. THE MOTIVES OF WIT AND WIT AS A SOCIAL PROCESS 214

C. THEORIES OF WIT VI. THE RELATION OF WIT TO DREAMS AND TO THE UNCONSCIOUS 249 VII. WIT AND THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC 288

A. ANALYSIS

WIT AND ITS RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS

I INTRODUCTION

Whoever has had occasion to examine that part of the literature of æsthetics and psychology dealing with the nature and affinities of wit, will, no doubt, concede that our philosophical inquiries have not awarded to wit the important rôle that it plays in our mental life. One can recount only a small number of thinkers who have penetrated at all deeply into the problems of wit. To be sure, among the authors on wit one finds the illustrious names of the poet Jean Paul (Fr. Richter), and of the philosophers Th. Vischer, Kuno Fischer, and Th. Lipps. But even these writers put the subject of wit in the background while their chief interest centers around the more comprehensive and more alluring problems of the comic.

In the main this literature gives the impression that it is altogether impractical to study wit except when treated as a part of the comic.

Presentation of the Subject by Other Authors

According to Th. Lipps (Komik und Humor, 1898) wit is “essentially the subjective side of the comic; i.e., it is that part of the comic which we ourselves create, which colors our conduct as such, and to which our relation is that of Superior Subject, never of Object, certainly not Voluntary Object” (p. 80). The following comment might also be added:—In general we designate as wit “every conscious and clever evocation of the comic, whether the comic element lies in the viewpoint or in the situation itself” (p. 78).

K. Fischer explains the relation between wit and the comic by the aid of caricature, which, according to his exposition, comes midway between the two (Über den Witz, 1889). The subject of the comic is the hideous element in any of its manifestations. “Where it is concealed it must be disclosed in the light of the comic view; where it is not at all or but slightly noticeable it must be rendered conspicuous and elucidated in such a manner that it becomes clear and intelligible. Thus arises caricature” (p. 45). “Our entire psychic world, the intellectual realm of our thoughts and conceptions, does not reveal itself to us on superficial consideration. It cannot be visualized directly either figuratively or intuitively, moreover it contains inhibitions, weak points, disfigurements, and an abundance of ludicrous and comical contrasts. In order to bring it out and to make it accessible to æsthetic examination, a force is necessary which is capable not only of depicting objects directly, but also of reflecting upon these conceptions and elucidating them—namely, a force capable of clarifying thought. This force is nothing but judgment. The judgment which produces the comic contrast is wit. In caricature wit has played its part unnoticed, but only in judgment does it attain its own individual form and the free domain of its evolution.”

As can be seen Lipps assigns the determining factor which classifies wit as part of the comic, to the activity or to the active behavior of the subject, whereas K. Fischer characterizes wit by its relation to its object, in which characterization he accentuates the hidden hideous element in the realm of thought. One cannot put to test the cogency of these definitions of wit; one can, in fact, hardly understand them unless one studies the text from which they were taken. One is thus forced to work his way through the author’s descriptions of the comic in order to learn anything about wit. From other passages, however, one discovers that the same authors attribute to wit essential characteristics of general validity in which they disregard its relation to the comic.

K. Fischer’s characterization of wit which seems to be most satisfactory to this author runs as follows: “Wit is a playful judgment” (p. 51). For an elucidation of this expression we are referred to the analogy: “How æsthetic freedom consists in the playful contemplation of objects” (p. 50). In another place (p. 20) the æsthetic attitude towards an object is characterized by the condition that we expect nothing from this object—especially no gratification of our serious needs—but that we content ourselves with the pleasure of contemplating the same. In contrast to labor the æsthetic attitude is playful. “It may be that from æsthetic freedom there also results a kind of judgment, freed from the conventional restrictions and rule of conduct, which, in view of its genesis, I will call the playful judgment. This conception contains the first condition and possibly the entire formula for the solution of our problem. ‘Freedom begets wit and wit begets freedom,’ says Jean Paul. Wit is nothing but a free play of ideas” (p. 24).

Since time immemorial a favorite definition of wit has been the ability to discover similarities in dissimilarities, i.e., to find hidden similarities. Jean Paul has jocosely expressed this idea by saying that “wit is the disguised priest who unites every couple.” Th. Vischer adds the postscript: “He likes best to unite those couples whose marriage the relatives refuse to sanction.” Vischer refutes this, however, by remarking that in some witticisms there is no question of comparison or the discovery of similarities. Hence with very little deviation from Jean Paul’s definition he defines wit as the skill to combine with surprising quickness many ideas, which through inner content and connections are foreign to one another. K. Fischer then calls attention to the fact that in a large number of these witty judgments one does not find similarities, but contrasts; and Lipps further remarks that these definitions refer to the wit that the humorist possesses and not to the wit that he produces.

Other viewpoints, in some measure connected with one another, which have been mentioned in defining and describing wit are: “the contrast of ideas,” “sense in nonsense,” and “confusion and clearness.”

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