Chapter X: Part 10

Through an example of displacement-wit I desire to discuss another
interesting character of the technique of wit. The genial actress
Gallmeyer when once asked how old she was is said to have answered
this unwelcome question with abashed and downcast eyes, by saying, “In
Brünn.” This is a very good example of displacement. Having been asked
her age, she replied by naming the place of her birth, thus
anticipating the next query, and in this manner she wishes to imply:
“This is a question which I prefer to pass by.” And still we feel that
the character of the witticism does not here come to expression
undimmed. The deviation from the question is too obvious; the
displacement is much too conspicuous. Our attention understands
immediately that it is a matter of an intentional displacement. In
other displacement-witticisms the displacement is disguised and our
attention is riveted by the effort to discover it. In one of the
displacement-witticisms (p. 69) the reply to the recommendation of the
horse—“What in the world should I do in Monticello at 6:30 in the
morning?”—the displacement is also an obtrusive one, but as a
substitute for it it acts upon the attention in a senseless and
confusing manner, whereas in the interrogation of the actress we know
immediately how to dispose of her displacement answer.

The so-called “facetious questions” which may make use of the best
techniques deviate from wit in other ways. An example of the facetious
question with displacement is the following: “What is a cannibal who
devours his father and mother?—Answer: An orphan.—And when he has
devoured all his other relatives?—Sole-heir.—And where can such a
monster ever find sympathy?—In the dictionary under S.” The facetious
questions are not full witticisms because the required witty answers
cannot be guessed like the allusions, omissions, etc., of wit.

Footnote 57:

Cf. _The Interpretation of Dreams_, Chapter VII.

Footnote 58:

Besides the dream-work and the technique of wit I have been able to
demonstrate condensation as a regular and significant process in
another psychic occurrence, in the mechanism of normal (not purposive)
forgetting. Singular impressions put difficulties in the way of
forgetting; impressions in any way analogous are forgotten by becoming
fused at their points of contact. The confusion of analogous
impressions is one of the first steps in forgetting.

Footnote 59:

Many of my patients while under psychoanalytic treatment are wont to
prove regularly by their laughter that I have succeeded in
demonstrating faithfully to their conscious perception the veiled
unconscious; they laugh also when the content of what is disclosed
does not at all justify this laughter. To be sure, it is conditional
that they have approached this unconscious closely enough to grasp it
when the physician has conjectured it and presented it to them.

Footnote 60:

In doing this we must not forget to reckon with the distortion brought
about by the censor which is still active in the psychoses.

Footnote 61:

_The Interpretation of Dreams._

Footnote 62:

The character of the comical which is referred to as its “dryness”
also depends in the broadest sense upon the differentiation of the
things spoken from the antics accompanying it.

Footnote 63:

_The Interpretation of Dreams_, p. 296.

Footnote 64:

This very remarkable and still inadequately understood behavior of
antagonistic relationships is probably not without value for the
understanding of the symptom of negativism in neurotics and in the
insane. Cf. the two latest works on the subject: Bleuler, “Über die
negative Suggestibilität,” _Psych.-Neurol. Wochenschrift_, 1904, and
Otto Groos’s _Zur Differential diagnostik negativistischer Phänomene_,
also my review of the _Gegensinn der Urworte_, in _Jahrb. f.
Psychonalyse_ II, 1910.

Footnote 65:

An expression of G. T. Fechner’s which has acquired significance from
the point of view of my conception.

Footnote 66:

Given by Translator.

Footnote 67:

I have everywhere identified the naïve with the naïve-comic, a
practice which is certainly not permissible in all cases. But it is
sufficient for our purposes to study the characteristics of the naïve
as exhibited by the “naïve joke” and the “naïve obscenity.” It is our
intention to proceed from here with the investigation of the nature of
the comic.

Footnote 68:

Also Bergson (_Laughter_, An essay on the Meaning of the Comic,
translated by Brereton and Rothwell, The Macmillan Co., 1914) rejects
with sound arguments this sort of explanation of comic pleasure, which
has unmistakably been influenced by the effort to create an analogy to
the laughing of a person tickled. The explanation of comic pleasure by
Lipps which might, in connection with his conception of the comic, be
represented as an “unexpected trifle,” is of an entirely different
nature.

Footnote 69:

The recollection of this innervation expenditure will remain the
essential part of the idea of this motion, and there will always be
methods of thought in my psychic life in which the idea will be
represented by nothing else than this expenditure. In other
connections a substitute for this element may possibly be put in the
form of other ideas, for instance the visual idea of the object of the
motion, or it may be put in the form of the word-idea; and in certain
types of abstract thought a sign instead of the full content itself
may suffice.

Footnote 70:

“What one has not in his head,” as the saying goes, “he must have in
his legs.”

Footnote 71:

The problem has been greatly confused by the general conditions
determining the comic, whereby the comic pleasure is seen to have its
source now in a too-muchness and now in a not-enoughness.

Footnote 72:

Degradation: A. Bain (_The Emotions and the Will_, 2nd Ed., 1865)
states: “The occasion of the ludicrous is the degradation of some
person of interest possessing dignity, in circumstances that excite no
other strong emotion” (p. 248).

Footnote 73:

“Thus every conscious and clever evocation of the comic is called wit,
be it the comic of views or situations. Naturally we cannot use this
view of wit here.” Lipps, l. c., p. 78.

Footnote 74:

At the most this is inserted by the dreamer as an explanation.

Footnote 75:

l. c., p. 294.

Footnote 76:

“Trente et quarante” is a gambling game.

Footnote 77:

Bergson, l. c., p. 29.

Footnote 78:

Sixth Ed., Berlin, 1891.

Footnote 79:

“You may well laugh, that no longer concerns you.”

Footnote 80:

That comic pleasure has its source in the “quantitative contrast,” in
the comparison of big and small, which ultimately also expresses the
essential relation of the child to the grown-up, would indeed be a
peculiar coincidence if the comic had nothing else to do with the
infantile.

Footnote 81:

“Our heads have the right to fall covered before thee.”

Footnote 82:

The excellent humoristic effect of a character like that of the fat
knight, Sir John Falstaff, is based on economised contempt and
indignation. To be sure we recognise in him the unworthy glutton and
fashionably dressed swindler, but our condemnation is disarmed through
a whole series of factors. We understand that he knows himself to be
just as we estimate him; he impresses us through his wit; and besides
that, his physical deformity produces a contact-effect in favor of a
comic conception of his personality instead of a serious one; as if
our demands for morality and honor must recoil from such a big
stomach. His activities are altogether harmless and are almost excused
by the comic lowness of those he deceives. We admit that the poor
devil has a right to live and enjoy himself like any one else, and we
almost pity him because in the principal situation we find him a
puppet in the hands of one much his superior. It is for this reason
that we cannot bear him any grudge and turn all we economize in him in
indignation into comic pleasure which he otherwise provides. Sir
John’s own humor really emanates from the superiority of an ego which
neither his physical nor his moral defects can rob of its joviality
and security.

On the other hand the courageous knight Don Quixote de la Mancha is a
figure who possesses no humor, and in his seriousness furnishes us a
pleasure which can be called humoristic although its mechanism shows a
decided deviation from that of humor. Originally Don Quixote is a
purely comic figure, a big child whose fancies from his books on
knighthood have gone to his head. It is known that at first the poet
wanted to show only that phase of his character, and that the creation
gradually outgrew the author’s original intentions. But after the poet
endowed this ludicrous person with the profoundest wisdom and noblest
aims and made him the symbolic representation of an idealism, a man
who believed in the realization of his aims, who took duties seriously
and promises literally, he ceased to be a comic personality. Like
humoristic pleasure which results from a prevention of emotional
feelings it originates here through the disturbance of comic pleasure.
However, in these examples we already depart perceptibly from the
simple cases of humor.

Footnote 83:

A term which is used in quite a different sense in the _Aesthetik_ of
Theo. Vischer.

Footnote 84:

If one does not hesitate to do some violence to the conception of
expectation, one may ascribe—according to the process of Lipps—a very
large sphere of the comic to the comic of expectation; but probably
the most original cases of the comic which result through a comparison
of a strange expenditure with one’s own will fit least into this
conception.

Footnote 85:

The characteristic of the “double face” naturally did not escape the
authors. Melinaud, from whom I borrowed the above expression,
conceives the condition for laughing in the following formula: “Ce qui
fait rire c’est qui est à la fois, d’un coté, absurde et de l’autre,
familier” (“Pourquoi rit-on?” _Revue de deux mondes_, February, 1895).
This formula fits in better with wit than with the comic, but it
really does not altogether cover the former. Bergson (l. c., p. 96)
defines the comic situation by the “reciprocal interference of
series,” and states: “A situation is invariably comic when it belongs
simultaneously to two altogether independent series of events and is
capable of being interpreted in two entirely different meanings at the
same time.” According to Lipps the comic is “the greatness and
smallness of the same.”

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.