Part 25

d) The occasion for releasing comic pleasure vanishes when the attention is fixed on the comparison capable of giving rise to the comic. Under such circumstances the comic force is lost from that which is otherwise sure to produce a comic effect. A movement or a mental activity cannot become comical to him whose interest is fixed at the time of comparing this movement with a standard which distinctly presents itself to him. Thus the examiner does not see the comical in the nonsense produced by the student in his ignorance; he is simply annoyed by it, whereas the offender’s classmates who are more interested in his chances of passing the examination than in what he knows, laugh heartily over the same nonsense. The teacher of dancing or gymnastics seldom has any eyes for the comic movements of his pupils, and the preacher entirely loses sight of humanity’s defects of character, which the writer of comedy brings out with so much effect. The comic process cannot stand examination by the attention, it must be able to proceed absolutely unnoticed in a manner similar to wit. But for good reasons, it would contradict the nomenclature of “conscious processes” which I have used in The Interpretation of Dreams, if one wished to call it of necessity unconscious. It rather belongs to the foreconscious, and one may use the fitting name “automatic” for all those processes which are enacted in the foreconscious and dispense with the attention energy which is connected with consciousness. The process of comparison of the expenditures must remain automatic if it is to produce comic pleasure.

Conditions Disturbing the Discharge

e) It is exceedingly disturbing to the comic if the case from which it originates gives rise at the same time to a marked release of affect. The discharge of the affective difference is then as a rule excluded. Affects, disposition, and the attitude of the individual in occasional cases make it clear that the comic comes or goes with the viewpoint of the individual person; that only in exceptional cases is there an absolute comic. The dependence or relativity of the comic is therefore much greater than of wit, which never happens but is regularly made, and at its production one may already give attention to the conditions under which it finds acceptance. But affective development is the most intensive of the conditions which disturb the comic, the significance of which is well known. It is therefore said that the comic feeling comes most in tolerably indifferent cases which evince no strong feelings or interests. Nevertheless it is just in cases with affective release that one may witness the production of a particularly strong expenditure-difference in the automatism of discharge. When Colonel Butler answers Octavio’s admonitions with “bitter laughter,” exclaiming:

“Thanks from the house of Austria!”

his bitterness has thus not prevented the laughter which results from the recollection of the disappointment which he believes he has experienced; and on the other hand, the magnitude of this disappointment could not have been more impressively depicted by the poet than by showing it capable of affecting laughter in the midst of the storm of unchained affects. It is my belief that this explanation may be applicable in all cases in which laughing occurs on other than pleasurable occasions, and in conjunction with exceedingly painful or tense affects.

f) If we also mention that the development of the comic pleasure can be promoted by means of any other pleasurable addition to the case which acts like a sort of contact-effect (after the manner of the fore-pleasure principle in the tendency-wit), then we have discussed surely not all the conditions of comic pleasure, yet enough of them to serve our purpose. We then see that no other assumption so easily covers these conditions, as well as the inconstancy and dependence of the comic effect, as this: the assumption that comic pleasure is derived from the discharge of a difference, which under many conditions can be diverted to a different use than discharge.

It still remains to give a thorough consideration of the comic of the sexual and obscene, but we shall only skim over it with a few observations. Here, too, we shall take the act of exposing one’s body as the starting-point. An accidental exposure produces a comical effect on us, because we compare the ease with which we attained the enjoyment of this view with the great expenditure otherwise necessary for the attainment of this object. The case thus comes nearer to the naïve-comic, but it is simpler than the latter. In every case of exhibitionism in which we are made spectators—or, in the case of the smutty joke hearers,—we play the part of the third person, and the person exposed is made comical. We have heard that it is the purpose of wit to replace obscenity and in this manner to reopen a source of comic pleasure that has been lost. On the contrary, spying out an exposure forms no example of the comic for the one spying, because the effort he exerts thereby abrogates the condition of comic pleasure; the only thing remaining is the sexual pleasure in what is seen. If the spy relates to another what he has seen, the person looked at again becomes comical, because the viewpoint that predominates is that the expenditure was omitted which would have been necessary for the concealment of the private parts. At all events, the sphere of the sexual or obscene offers the richest opportunities for gaining comic pleasure beside the pleasurable sexual stimulation, as it exposes the person’s dependence on his physical needs (degradation) or it can uncover behind the spiritual love the physical demands of the same (unmasking.)

The Psychogenesis of the Comic

An invitation to seek the understanding of the comic in its psychogenesis comes surprisingly from Bergson’s well written and stimulating book Laughter. Bergson, whose formula for the conception of the comic character has already become known to us—“mechanization of life,” “the substitution of something mechanical for the natural”—reaches by obvious associations from automatism to the automaton, and seeks to trace a series of comic effects to the blurred memories of children’s toys. In this connection he once reaches this viewpoint, which, to be sure, he soon drops; he seeks to trace the comic to the after-effect of childish pleasure. “Perhaps we ought even to carry simplification still farther, and, going back to our earliest recollection, try to discover in the games that amused us as children the first faint traces of the combinations that make us laugh as grown-up persons.”... “Above all, we are too apt to ignore the childish element, so to speak, latent in most of our joyful emotions” (p. 67). As we have now traced wit to that childish playing with words and thoughts which is prohibited by the rational critic, we must be tempted to trace also these infantile roots of the comic, conjectured by Bergson.

As a matter of fact we meet a whole series of conditions which seem most promising, when we examine the relation of the comic to the child. The child itself does not by any means seem comic to us, although its character fulfills all conditions which, in comparison to our own, would result in a comic difference. Thus we see the immoderate expenditure of motion as well as the slight psychic expenditure, the control of the psychic activities through bodily functions, and other features. The child gives us a comic impression only when it does not behave as a child but as an earnest grown-up, and even then it affects us only in the same manner as other persons in disguise; but as long as it retains the nature of the child our perception of it furnishes us a pure pleasure, which perhaps recalls the comic. We call it naïve in so far as it displays to us the absence of inhibitions, and we call naïve-comic those of its utterances which in another we would have considered obscene or witty.

On the other hand the child lacks all feeling for the comic. This sentence seems to say no more than that this comic feeling, like many others, first makes its appearance in the course of psychic development; and that would by no means be remarkable, especially since we must admit that it shows itself distinctly even during years which must be accredited to childhood. Nevertheless it can be demonstrated that the assertion that the child lacks feeling for the comic has a deeper meaning than one would suppose. In the first place it will readily be seen that it cannot be different, if our conception is correct, that the comic feeling results from a difference of expenditure produced in the effort to understand the other. Let us again take comic motion as an example. The comparison which furnishes the difference reads as follows, when put in conscious formulæ: “So he does it,” and: “So I would do it,” or “So I have done it.” But the child lacks the standard contained in the second sentence, it understands simply through imitation; it just does it. Education of the child furnishes it with the standard: “So you shall do it,” and if it now makes use of the same in comparisons, the nearest conclusion is: “He has not done it right, and I can do it better.” In this case it laughs at the other, it laughs at him with a feeling of superiority. There is nothing to prevent us from tracing this laughter also to a difference of expenditure; but according to the analogy with the examples of laughter occurring in us we may conclude that the comic feeling is not experienced by the child when it laughs as an expression of superiority. It is a laughter of pure pleasure. In our own case whenever the judgment of our own superiority occurs we smile rather than laugh, or if we laugh, we are still able to distinguish clearly this conscious realization of our superiority from the comic which makes us laugh.

It is probably correct to say that in many cases which we perceive as “comical” and which we cannot explain, the child laughs out of pure pleasure, whereas the child’s motives are clear and assignable. If, for instance, some one slips on the street and falls, we laugh because this impression—we know not why—is comical. The child laughs in the same case out of a feeling of superiority or out of joy over the calamity of others. It amounts to saying: “You fell, but I did not.” Certain pleasure motives of the child seems to be lost for us grown-ups, but as a substitute for these we perceive under the same conditions the “comic” feeling.

The Infantile and the Comic

If we were permitted to generalize, it would seem very tempting to transfer the desired specific character of the comic into the awakening of the infantile, and to conceive the comic as a regaining of “lost infantile laughing.” One could then say, “I laugh every time over a difference of expenditure between the other and myself, when I discover in the other the child.” Or expressed more precisely, the whole comparison leading to the comic would read as follows:

“He does it this way—I do it differently— He does it just as I did when I was a child.”

This laughter would thus result every time from the comparison between the ego of the grown-up and the ego of the child. The uncertainty itself of the comic difference, causing now the lesser and now the greater expenditure to appear comical to me, would correspond to the infantile determination; the comic therein is actually always on the side of the infantile.

This is not contradicted by the fact that the child itself as an object of comparison does not make a comic impression on me but a purely pleasurable one, nor by the fact that this comparison with the infantile produces a comic effect only when any other use of the difference is avoided. For the conditions of the discharge come thereby into consideration. Everything that confines a psychic process in an association of ideas works against the discharge of the surplus occupation of energy and directs the same to other utilization; whatever isolates a psychic act favors the discharge. By consciously focussing on the child as the person of comparison, the discharge necessary for the production of comic pleasure therefore becomes impossible; only in foreconscious energetic states is there a similar approach to the isolation which we may moreover also ascribe to the psychic processes in the child. The addition to the comparison: “Thus I have also done it as a child,” from which the comic effect would emanate, could come into consideration for the average difference only when no other association could obtain control over the freed surplus.

If we still continue with our attempt to find the nature of the comic in the foreconscious association of the infantile, we have to go a step further than Bergson and admit that the comparison resulting in the comic need not necessarily awake old childish pleasure and play, but that it is enough if it touches the childish nature in general, perhaps even childish pain. Herein we deviate from Bergson, but remain consistent with ourselves, when we connect the comic pleasure not with remembered pleasure but always with a comparison. This is possible, for cases of the first kind comprise in a measure those which are regularly and irresistibly comic. Let us now draw up the scheme of the comic possibilities instanced above. We stated that the comic difference would be found either

(a) through a comparison between the other and one’s self, or (b) through a comparison altogether within the other, or (c) through a comparison altogether within one’s self.

In the first case the other would appear to me as a child, in the second he would put himself on the level of a child, and in the third I would find the child in myself. To the first class belong the comic of movement and of forms, of psychic activity and of character. The infantile corresponding to it would be the motion-impulse and the inferior mental and moral development of the child, so that the fool would perhaps become comical to me by reminding me of a lazy child, and the bad person by reminding me of a naughty child. The only time one might speak of a childish pleasure lost to grown-ups would be where the child’s own motion pleasure came into consideration.

The second case, in which the comic altogether depends on identification with the other, comprises numerous possibilities such as the comic situation, exaggeration (caricature), imitation, degradation, and unmasking. It is under this head that the presentation of infantile viewpoints mostly take place. For the comic situation is largely based on embarrassment, in which we feel again the helplessness of the child. The worst of these embarrassments, the disturbance of other activities through the imperative demands of natural wants, corresponds to the child’s lack of control of the physical functions. Where the comic situation acts through repetitions it is based on the pleasure of constant repetition peculiar to the child (asking questions, telling stories), through which it makes itself a nuisance to grown-ups. Exaggeration, which also affords pleasure even to the grown-up in so far as it is justified by his reason, corresponds to the characteristic want of moderation in the child, and its ignorance of all quantitative relations which it later really learns to know as qualitative. To keep within bounds, to practice moderation even in permissible feelings is a late fruit of education, and is gained through opposing inhibitions of the psychic activity acquired in the same association. Wherever this association is weakened as in the unconscious of dreams and in the monoideation of the psychoneuroses, the want of moderation of the child again makes its appearance.

The understanding of comic imitation has caused us many difficulties so long as we left out of consideration the infantile factor. But imitation is the child’s best art and is the impelling motive of most of its playing. The child’s ambition is not so much to distinguish himself among his equals as to imitate the big fellows. The relation of the child to the grown-up determines also the comic of degradation, which corresponds to the lowering of the grown-up in the life of the child. Few things can afford the child greater pleasure than when the grown-up lowers himself to its level, disregards his superiority, and plays with the child as its equal. The alleviation which furnishes the child pure pleasure is a debasement used by the adult as a means of making things comic and as a source of comic pleasure. As for unmasking we know that it is based on degradation.

The infantile determination of the third case, the comic of expectation, presents most of the difficulties; this really explains why those authors who put this case to the foreground in their conception of the comic, found no occasion to consider the infantile factor in their studies of the comic. The comic of expectation is farthest from the child’s thoughts, the ability to understand this is the latest quality to appear in him. Most of those cases which produce a comic effect in the grown-up are probably felt by the child as a disappointment. One can refer, however, to the blissful expectation and gullibility of the child in order to understand why one considers himself as comical “as a child,” when he succumbs to comic disappointment.

If the preceding remarks produce a certain probability that the comic feeling may be translated into the thought; everything is comic that does not fit the grown-up, I still do not feel bold enough,—in view of my whole position to the problem of the comic—to defend this last proposition with the same earnestness as those that I formulated before. I am unable to decide whether the lowering to the level of the child is only a special case of comic degradation, or whether everything comical fundamentally depends on the degradation to the level of the child.

Humor

An examination of the comic, however superficial it may be, would be most incomplete if it did not devote at least a few remarks to the consideration of humor. There is so little doubt as to the essential relationship between the two that a tentative explanation of the comic must furnish at least one component for the understanding of humor. It does not matter how much appropriate and important material was presented as an appreciation of humor, which, as one of the highest psychic functions, enjoys the special favor of thinkers, we still cannot elude the temptation to express its essence through an approach to the formulæ given for wit and the comic.

We have heard that the release of painful emotions is the strongest hindrance to the comic effect. Just as aimless motion causes harm, stupidity mischief, and disappointment pain;—the possibility of a comic effect eventually ends, at least for him who cannot defend himself against such pain, who is himself affected by it or must participate in it, whereas the disinterested party shows by his behavior that the situation of the case in question contains everything necessary to produce comic effect. Humor is thus a means to gain pleasure despite the painful affects which disturb it; it acts as a substitute for this affective development, and takes its place. If we are in a situation which tempts us to liberate painful affects according to our habits, and motives then urge us to suppress these affects statu nascendi, we have the conditions for humor. In the cases just cited the person affected by misfortune, pain, etc., could obtain humoristic pleasure while the disinterested party laughs over the comic pleasure. We can only say that the pleasure of humor results at the cost of this discontinued liberation of affect; it originates through the economized expenditure of affect.

The Economy in Expenditure of Affect