Part 35

Footnote 30:

Heine’s answer is a combination of two wit-techniques—a displacement and an allusion—for he does not say directly: “He is an ox.”

Footnote 31:

The word “take,” owing to its meanings, lends itself very well towards the formation of plays upon words, a pure example of which I wish to cite as a contrast to the displacement mentioned above. While walking with his friend, in front of a café, a well-known stock-plunger and bank director made this proposal: “Let us go in and take something.” His friend held him back and said: “My dear sir, remember there are people in there.”

Footnote 32:

For the latter see a later chapter. It will perhaps not be superfluous to add here a few words for better understanding. The displacement regularly occurs between a statement and an answer, and turns the stream of thought to a direction different from the one started in the statement. The justification for separating the displacement from the double meaning is best seen in the examples where both are combined, that is, where the wording of the statement admits of a double meaning which was not intended by the speaker, but which reveals in the answer the way to the displacement (see examples).

Footnote 33:

See Chapter III.

Footnote 34:

A similar nonsense technique results when the joke aims to maintain a connection which seems to be removed through the special conditions of its content. A joke of this sort is related by J. Falke (l. c.): “Is this the place where the Duke of Wellington spoke these words?” “Yes, this is the place; but he never spoke these words.”

Footnote 35:

Following an example of the Greek Anthology.

Footnote 36:

Cf. my Interpretation of Dreams, Chap. VI, The Dream Work, translated by A. A. Brill, The Macmillan Co., New York, and Allen & Unwin, London.

Footnote 37:

The word tendency encountered hereafter in the expression “Tendency-Wit” (Tendenz Witz) is used adjectively in the same sense as in the familiar phrase “Tendency Play.”

Footnote 38:

Cf. my Psychopathology of Everyday Life, translated by A. A. Brill, The Macmillan Co., New York, and T. Fisher Unwin, London.

Footnote 39:

Cf. Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, 2nd Ed., 1916, translated by A. A. Brill, Monograph Series, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases.

Footnote 40:

Moll’s Kontrektationstrieb (Untersuchungen über die Libido sexualies, 1898).

Footnote 41:

It is the same mechanism that controls “slips of the tongue” and other phenomena of self-betrayal. Cf. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.

Footnote 42:

“There is nothing certain about to-morrow,” Lorenzo del Medici.

Footnote 43:

See his essays in the Politisch-anthropologischen Revue, II, 1903.