Freud's discoveries on the nature of
dreams led him to use this vision on
other areas of life creating an
important trilogy between 1904 and 1905.
His first installment explored everyday life.
Continuing with the same lens of
unconscious influences, Freud next aimed
his sights on humor.
Like in his book on dreams, Freud begins
The Joke and its Relation to the Unconscious,
with a survey of expert
opinions on the workings of humor.
They include novelist Jean Paul,
psychiatrist Emile Kraepelin, and
philosophers Theodor Vischer,
Kuno Fischer and Theodore Lipps.
Their opinions include ways to view
humor as "playful judgment", a "free play of
ideas", "sense in nonsense", "bafflement and
light dawning." Lipps emphasizes brevity.
This allows the listener the pleasure to
figure things out. With more depth some
of the opinions move closer to where
Freud is heading,
An example used to illustrate this is from
writer Heinrich Heine about a character
of Hirsch-Hyacinth, a lottery collector
and corn remover, who boasts to the poet
of his connections with the rich Baron
Rothschild and finally says:
The joke points to Hirsch's actual lack
of a connection with the baron betraying
a playful judgment of rich people
creating a "bafflement and a light
dawning" to the meaning of his invented
word, 'Famillionaire', and a brevity of saying
so much with one sentence. The "free play
of ideas" allowed Hirsch to create a new
word with a condensation a combination
of two words that makes "sense
in nonsense" as described before.
Freud was quick to pick up his dream theory to
explain these types of jokes.
"The interesting processes of condensation
with substitute-formation which we have
recognized to be the core of the joke
technique in verbal jokes pointed us
toward the formation of dreams, for the
same psychical processes have been
discovered in the mechanism at work of
here. Being aware that these are joke
examples from the early 20th century,
they may not be funny to modern
audiences but they are funny compared to
a simple statement that "a rich person
treated me as an inferior." It may mean
the same thing but what makes the above
sentence more funny is the type of joke
that it is, and what it does to the
listener. Freud says,
Freud points directly at the pleasure
which he is beginning to flesh out into
a theory that we will later see in the
Two principles of Mental Functioning,
where briefly, each subject seeks to gain
pleasure and avoid pain to get their
needs met. In this case in an insulting
joke, Freud says,
In modern day language it's
about letting go of political correctness
and being authentic with our
actual feelings
We all have repressed negative opinions
of others, or systems that disadvantage us.
An example joke in the Brill translation of the book
is as follows:
"X & Y met at a dinner. X acting as a
Toastmaster introduced Y as follows:
'My friend Y is a very wonderful man.
All you have to do is open his mouth, put in a dinner,
and a speech appears.'
Responding to the speaker, Y said 'My friend the
Toastmaster told you what a wonderful
man I am. Let me tell you what a
wonderful man he is. All you have to do
is open anybody's mouth, put in his speech,
and the dinner appears.'
When the joke is good-natured for both
people it's considered a Roast.
When the context leads only to a permanent devaluation,
and defeat of the target.
It becomes personal when the listener feels insulted by the joke, or doesn't agree
with their point of view.
The joke transforms into a "diatribe" and produces
"indignation" in the listener.
The listener can also respond with insulting jokes of their own.
Jokes in political campaigns,
or gossip about celebrities would be
perfect examples of aggressive jokes
that reduce psychological pain and
self-judgement in the subject, who feels
envious about a celebrity, and wants to
see them fail, or if the subject feels
oppressed by a political figure, and
wants to "kick the bum" out.
But there has to be willing and supportive listeners
for the exchange to go well, or it has
the possibility of turning into conflict.
This has an important effect on the
teller of the joke, since another
pleasure of jokes, Freud illustrates,
is a pleasure in seeing another person laugh.
The teller would then need to tell it to another person to continue to gain
pleasure from that joke, and bask in the
listeners pleasure vicariously.
Even if there are a lot of willing audience
members, there's still a need to create
new jokes when successful jokes
themselves become dated or boring with
repetition.
When listeners no longer understand the
historical context required to make the
appropriate associations, a fresh new
joke with the same aim of increasing
pleasure and reducing stress, is created with current contexts.
When looking at boredom, a pleasure comes if the joke is
relevant, but it wears off once relief is
enjoyed. It cannot be enjoyed any further
at the same intensity of pleasure
because the inhibition targeted by the
joke has already been released.
Another inhibition has to be targeted
for a new joke.
Freud also hints at the contagiousness
of jokes that can relieve psychological
oppression in a group of people.
If the listeners agree
with the point of view in the joke,
it can spread to others
as the subject gains pleasure in the
retelling of it, and exhaust the final
pleasure of the joke.
The joke then spreads in the culture until it is
exhausted of pleasure for anyone that
was willing to hear it.
Even the dinner example above shows how tension
and release can be passed like a hot potato
between two people, but in that case they
both got to enjoy release.
The audience then in the dinner example above,
could tell the joke to others who never
heard it before, or keep repeating it in
their minds until they get bored and
forgot about it.
Consciousness is involved in humor,
especially when it's analyzed, but so is
the unconscious, when it creates ideas
for the joke material. Intuitions, or
psychological associations, can pop out
of the unconscious, with novel
associations and groupings of words and
ideas. Yet too much conscious analysis
can interfere with the process. Freud says,
This sounds similar to
the process of movie watching, where the
situations on screen are unbelievable
compared to reality, but because people
suspend disbelief, or another way of
saying it, because they don't analyze the
movie to death, they're able to enjoy it.
A lot of Freudian psychology is a reminder
that the brain creates pleasure by
building up tension and then releasing it.
Jokes are no different. He says,
As Freud tries to compare
his dream theory to jokes, he finds there are some similarities
and some differences.
Displacement of sensitive dream material
related to self complexes, defensively
push the unpleasant ideas, to dwell
instead on similar ideas, that don't have
that charge of negative effect.
Eg. Guilt, shame, hostility, jealousy, etc.
Thinking about it now, it makes sense
that if the brain is constantly dwelling
on thoughts that are literally causing
brain damage with stress chemicals
a natural survival mechanism would be to
move the mind's thinking away from the
painful complex, to mitigate the damage.
The condensation and symbolization,
the destination of the displacements,
can create narratives that are unreliable
but safe. What is different here from
dreams and jokes, is a need to go in the
opposite direction, and gain relief by
letting go of the defensive censorship,
and seeing the truth as the mind sees it.
Freud says,
Jumping to a later paper, Humour (1927),
Freud looked at another use of jokes,
but jokes that are self-deprecating.
Freud uses an example of a criminal who was
being led out to the gallows on a Monday
who remarked, "well the weeks beginning nicely."
"He was producing the humor
himself. The humorous process is
completed in his own person, and
obviously affords him a certain sense of
satisfaction." The subject can momentarily
let go of the stress of their
predicament.
Freud connects it to his understanding
of narcissism at the time. "Humour has
something liberating about it, but also
has something of a grandeur and elevation.
The grandeur in it clearly lies in the
triumph of narcissism. The victorious
assertion of the ego's invulnerability.
The ego refuses to be distressed by the
provocations of reality, to let itself be
compelled to suffer. In fact that such
traumas are no more than occasions for
it to gain pleasure. This last feature is
a quite essential element of humor.
Let us suppose that the criminal had said
'it doesn't worry me.What does it matter
after all if a fellow like me is hanged?
the world wouldn't come to an end
because of it.' We should have to admit
that such a speech does in fact display
the same magnificent superiority over
the real situation, but it does not
betray a trace of humor. Indeed it is
based on an appraisal of reality which
runs directly counter to the appraisal
made by humor. Humor is not resigned.
It is rebellious. It signifies not only the
triumph of the ego, but also on the
Pleasure Principle, which is able here to
assert itself against the unkindness of
the real circumstances."
A darker side of humor are deliberate
insults, and their ability to steal pride
from others. The need to feel superior
to relieve feelings of inferiority is an
endless tit-for-tat. There's a point
where the humor touches on areas where
the listener already feels shame and
inferiority, so it becomes salt on the
wound.
The cycle revenge can spin the entire
thing out of control with reprisals.
Yet for many, when humor is expressed with skill,
it becomes indispensable to our life.
In a world without humor, we would
have to follow rules that ignore our
humanity. There would be no
self-acceptance of human limitations,
no rebellion against external and internal
exploitative processes, and no way to
criticize the way things are and shine a
light on how things could be better.
The great thing is that our unconscious aids humor automatically,
so that attempts at
control and censorship are met with
fresh associations and powerful impulses,
that appear in Freudian slips
and unexpected laughter. A lot of what
freedom is, is the freedom to feel,
and face the world authentically.
No example is better than being with friends
and releasing how we really feel.
The relief of repression is big, and so is the
laughter.