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.[80]
_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_
Humor is the most self-sufficient of the forms of the comic; its process
consummating itself in one single person and the participation of
another adds nothing new to it. I can enjoy the pleasure of humor
originating in myself without feeling the necessity of imparting it to
another. It is not easy to tell what happens dining the production of
humoristic pleasure in a person; but one gains a certain insight by
investigating these cases of humor which have emanated from persons with
whom we have entered into a sympathetic understanding. By
sympathetically understanding the humoristic person in these cases one
gets the same pleasure. The coarsest form of humor, the so-called humor
of the gallows or grim-humor (_Galgenhumor_), may enlighten us in this
regard. The rogue, on being led to execution on Monday, remarked: “Yes,
this week is beginning well.” This is really a witticism, as the remark
is quite appropriate in itself, on the other hand it is displaced in the
most nonsensical fashion, as there can be no further happening for him
this week. But it required humor to make such wit, that is, to overlook
what distinguished the beginning of this week from other weeks, and to
deny the difference which could give rise to motives for very particular
emotional feelings. The case is the same when on the way to the gallows
he requests a neckerchief for his bare neck, in order to guard against
taking cold, a precaution which would be quite praiseworthy under
different circumstances, but becomes exceedingly superfluous and
indifferent in view of the impending fate of this same neck. We must say
that there is something like greatness of soul in this _blague_, in this
clinging to his usual nature and in deviating from that which would
overthrow and drive this nature into despair. This form of grandeur of
humor thus appears unmistakably in cases in which our admiration is not
inhibited by the circumstances of the humoristic person.
In Victor Hugo’s _Ernani_ the bandit who entered into a conspiracy
against his king, Charles I, of Spain, (Charles V, as the German
Emperor), falls into the hands of his most powerful enemy; he foresees
his fate; as one convicted of high treason his head will fall. But this
prospect does not deter him from introducing himself as a hereditary
Grandee of Spain and from declaring that he has no intention of waiving
any prerogative belonging to such personage. A Grandee of Spain could
appear before his royal master with his head covered. Well:
“Nos têtes ont le droit
De tomber couvertes devant de toi.”[81]
This is excellent humor and if we do not laugh on hearing it, it is
because our admiration covers the humoristic pleasure. In the case of
the rogue who did not wish to take cold on the way to the gallows we
roar with laughter. The situation which should have driven this criminal
to despair, might have evoked in us intense pity, but this pity is
inhibited because we understand that he who is most concerned is quite
indifferent to the situation. As a result of this understanding the
expenditure for pity, which was already prepared in us, became
inapplicable and we laughed it off. The indifference of the rogue, which
we notice has cost him a great expenditure of psychic labor, infects us
as it were.
Economy of sympathy is one of the most frequent sources of humoristic
pleasure. Mark Twain’s humor usually follows this mechanism. When he
tells us about the life of his brother, how, as mi employee in a large
road-building enterprise, he was hurled into the air through a premature
explosion of a blast, to come to earth again far from the place where he
was working, feelings of sympathy for this unfortunate are invariably
aroused in us. We should like to inquire whether he sustained no injury
in this accident; but the continuation of the story that the brother
lost a half-day’s pay for being away from the place he worked diverts us
entirely from sympathy and makes us almost as hard-hearted as that
employer, and just as indifferent to the possible injury to the victim’s
health. Another time Mark Twain presents us his pedigree, which he
traces back almost as far back as one of the companions of Columbus. But
after describing the character of this ancestor, whose entire
possessions consisted of several pieces of linen each bearing a
different mark, we cannot help laughing at the expense of the stored-up
piety, a piety which characterized our frame of mind at the beginning of
this family history. The mechanism of humoristic pleasure is not
disturbed by our knowing that this family history is a fictitious one,
and that this fiction serves a satirical tendency to expose the
embellishments which result in imparting such pedigrees to others; it is
just as independent of the conditions of reality as the manufactured
comic. Another of Mark Twain’s stories relates how his brother
constructed for himself subterranean quarters into which he brought a
bed, a table, and a lamp, and that as a roof he used a large piece of
sail-cloth with a hole through the centre; how during the night after
the room was completed, a cow being driven home fell through the opening
in the ceiling on to the table and extinguished the lamp; how his
brother helped patiently to hoist the animal out and to rearrange
everything; how he did the same thing when the same disturbance was
repeated the following night; and then every succeeding night; such a
story becomes comical through repetition. But Mark Twain closes with the
information that in the forty-sixth night when the cow again fell
through, his brother finally remarked that the thing was beginning to
grow monotonous; and here we can no longer restrain our humoristic
pleasure, for we had long expected to hear how the brother would express
his anger over this chronic _malheur_. The slight humor which we draw
from our own life we usually produce at the expense of anger instead of
irritating ourselves.[82]
_Forms of Humor_
The forms of humor are extraordinarily varied according to the nature of
the emotional feelings which are economized in favor of humor, as
sympathy, anger, pain, compassion, etc. And this series seems incomplete
because the sphere of humor experiences a constant enlargement, as often
as an artist or writer succeeds in mastering humoristically the, as yet,
unconquered emotional feelings and in making them, through artifices
similar to those in the above example, a source of humoristic pleasure.
Thus the artists of _Simplicissimus_ have worked wonders in gaining
humor at the expense of fear and disgust. The manifestations of humor
are above all determined by two peculiarities, which are connected with
the conditions of its origin. In the first place, humor may appear fused
with wit or any other form of the comic; whereby it is entrusted with
the task of removing a possible emotional development which would form a
hindrance to the pleasurable effect. Secondly, it can entirely set aside
this emotional development or only partially, which is really the more
frequent case, because the simpler function and the different forms of
“broken”[83] humor, results in that humor which smiles under its tears.
It withdraws from the affect a part of its energy and gives instead the
accompanying humoristic sound.
As may be noticed by former examples the humoristic pleasure gained by
entering into sympathy with a thing results from a special technique
resembling displacement through which the liberation of affect held
ready is disappointed and the energy occupation is deflected to other,
and, not often, to secondary matters. This does not help us, however, to
understand the process by which the displacement from the development of
affect proceeds in the humoristic person himself. We see that the
recipient intimates the producer of the humor in his psychic processes,
but we discover nothing thereby concerning the forces which make this
process possible in the latter.
We can only say, when, for example, somebody succeeds in paying no heed
to a painful affect because he holds before himself the greatness of the
world’s interest as a contrast to his own smallness, that we see in this
no function of humor but one of philosophic thinking, and we gain no
pleasure even if we put ourselves into his train of thought. The
humoristic displacement is therefore just as impossible in the light of
conscious attention as is the comic comparison; like the latter it is
connected with the condition to remain in the foreconscious—that is to
say, to remain automatic.
One reaches some solution of humoristic displacement if one examines it
in the light of a defense process. The defense processes are the psychic
correlates of the flight reflex and follow the task of guarding against
the origin of pain from inner sources; in fulfilling this task they
serve the psychic function as an automatic adjustment, which finally
proves harmful and therefore must be subjected to the control of the
conscious thinking. A definite form of this defense, the failure of
repression, I have demonstrated as the effective mechanism in the origin
of the psychoneuroses. Humor can now be conceived as the loftiest
variant of this defense activity. It disdains to withdraw from conscious
attention the ideas which are connected with the painful affect, as
repression does, and thus it overcomes the defense automatism. It brings
this about by finding the means to withdraw the energy resulting from
the liberation of pain which is held in readiness and through discharge
changes the same into pleasure. It is even credible that it is again the
connection with the infantile that puts at humor’s disposal the means
for this function. Only in childhood did we experience intensively
painful affects over which to-day as grown-ups we would laugh; just as a
humorist laughs over his present painful affects. The elevation of his
ego, of which humoristic displacement gives evidence,—the translation of
which would read: I am too big to have these causes affect me
painfully—he could find in the comparison of his present ego with his
infantile ego. This conception is to some extent confirmed by the rôle
which falls to the infantile in the neurotic processes of repression.
_The Relation of Humor to Wit and Comic_
On the whole humor is closer to the comic than wit. Like the former its
psychic localization is in the foreconscious, whereas wit, as we had to
assume, is formed as a compromise between the unconscious and the
foreconscious. On the other hand, humor has no share in the peculiar
nature in which wit and the comic meet, a peculiarity which perhaps we
have not hitherto emphasized strongly enough. It is a condition for the
origin of the comic that we be induced to apply—either _simultaneously_
or in rapid succession—to the same thought function two different modes
of ideas, between which the “comparison” then takes place and thus forms
the comic difference. Such differences originate between the expenditure
of the stranger and one’s own, between the usual expenditure and the
emergency expenditure, between an anticipated expenditure and one which
has already occurred.[84]
The difference between two forms of conception resulting simultaneously,
which work with different expenditures, comes into consideration in wit,
in respect to the hearer. The one of these two conceptions, by taking
the hints contained in the witticism, follows the train of thought
through the unconscious, while the other conception remains on the
surface and presents the witticism like any wording from the
foreconscious which has become conscious. Perhaps it would not be
considered an unjustified statement if we should refer the pleasure of
the witticism heard to the difference between these two forms of
presentation.
Concerning wit we here repeat our former statement concerning its
Janus-like double-facedness, a simile we used when the relation between
wit and the comic still appeared to us unsettled.[85]
The character thus put into the foreground becomes indistinct when we
deal with humor. To be sure, we feel the humoristic pleasure where an
emotional feeling is evaded, which we might have expected as a pleasure
usually belonging to the situation; and in so far humor really falls
under the broadened conception of the comic of expectation. But in humor
it is no longer a question of two different kinds of presentations
having the same content; the fact that the situation comes under the
domination of a painful emotional feeling which should have been
avoided, puts an end to possible comparison with the nature in the comic
and in wit. The humoristic displacement is really a case of that
different kind of utilization of a freed expenditure which proved to be
so dangerous for the comic effect.
_Formulæ for Wit, Comic, and Humor_
Now, that we have reduced the mechanism of humoristic pleasure to a
formula analogous to the formula of comic pleasure and of wit, we are at
the end of our task. It has seemed to us that the pleasure of wit
originates from an _economy of expenditure in inhibition_, of the comic
from an _economy of expenditure in thought_, and of humor from an
_economy of expenditure in feeling_. All three activities of our psychic
apparatus derive pleasure from economy. They all strive to bring back
from the psychic activity a pleasure which has really been lost in the
development of this activity. For the euphoria which we are thus
striving to obtain is nothing but the state of a bygone time in which we
were wont to defray our psychic work with slight expenditure. It is the
state of our childhood in which we did not know the comic, were
incapable of wit, and did not need humor to make us happy.
INDEX
A
Abstract wit, 128
Absurdity, 77
Actuality, 186
Æsthetics, vi
Agassiz, 54
Aggression, 138, 152, 160, 232
Alluring-premiums, 210
Allusions, 107, 108, 232
Ambiguity, 45
Ambitious impulse, 219
Application of same material, 49
Aristotle, 184
Attributions, 121
Automatic process, 238
Automatisms, 85, 86, 87, 235, 358
B
Bain, 226, 322
Bergson, 301, 337, 360
Blasphemous witticisms, 171
Bleuler, 278
_Bonmot_, 43
Brevity, 10, 29, 52, 243
Brill, 22, 31, 35, 37, 38, 56
C
Caricature, 280, 303, 320
Censor, 260
Characterization-wit, 71
Child, 190, 309, 362
Childhood, 149
Comic, 4, 10, 221, 287, 313
element, 88
façade, 236
its origin, 302
its psychogenesis, 360
of expectation, 317
of imitation, 336
Comic, of speech, 345
motion, 304
pleasure, its origin, 351
situations, 303, 314
Comical character, 277
Comparison, 113
with unification, 130
Composition, 31
Condensation, 20, 48
examples of, 21, 22, 23
in dreams, 31, 49, 256
with modification and substitution, 25
Conflict, 163
Contrast, 8
Critical witticisms, 171
Cynical tendency, 204
witticisms and self-criticism, 166
Cynicism, 65, 161
pessimistic, 170
D
Darwin, 226
Defence, 138
reaction, 142
Derision, 157
De Quincey, 22
Disguise, 303
Displacement, 67, 61, 161
in dreams, 256
Displacement-wit, 68, 71, 237
Don Quixote, 377
Double meaning, 40, 103
and displacement, 66
of a name, 41
Doubt in witty comparisons, 118
Dream-formation, 260
Dream-work, 249, 275
Dreams, 30, 250, 251
Dugas, 224, 242
E
Economy, 49, 52, 242, 245
of psychic expenditure, 180
Ehrenfels, 165
Exaggeration, 280
Exhibitionism, 142
F
Façade, 155, 158
Facetious questions, 238
Falke, 14, 80, 95
Falstaff, Sir John, 376
Faulty thinking, 81, 84
Fechner, 188, 207, 280
Fischer, 3, 4, 6, 11, 43, 47, 55, 89, 132, 136
Flaubert, 24
Foreconscious, 282
Fore-pleasure, 209, 211
G