This is the second of several installments on Sigmund Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905; free eBook) – and the reactions to it. I’m using this blog to make public my notes, both to help people to understand the theories as well as to help me clarify in my own mind what philosophers and theorists have said about comedy, humor, jokes, etc.
In this installment, I go into the second set of criteria and characteristics of jokes from from Jean Paul Richter, Theodor Vischer, Kuno Fischer, and Theodor Lipps, that “[Seem] to us at first sight so very much to the point and so easily confirmed by instances” that we can easily accept them (6):
- The coupling of dissimilar things
- Contrasting ideas
- Sense in nonsense
- The succession of bewilderment and enlightenment/illumination
- The peculiar brevity of wit
While Freud worries that there’s no unified theory that relates all the criteria and characteristics to one another, I’m trying to clarify these characteristics to get a better handle on his theory.
The coupling of dissimilar things
Freud notes that a classic definition of joking is “the ability to find similarity between dissimilar things – that is, hidden similarities” (4). While the German, Witz, is translated in Freud as “joke” (and maybe also jest, jape, crack, gag, rib), it also means wit, wittiness, and witticism, which usually are defined as the possession of reasoning, mental soundness, astuteness, superior intellect, and “the ability to relate seemingly disparate things so as to illuminate or amuse” (Merriam-Webster.com).
Of course, as Freud and Lipps point out, this isn’t a quality of the joke, but of the joker; jokers make the connections. Usually this process can be called comparison, the opposite of contrast, but contrast is part of it too.
Contrast is finding differences in things thought to be similar, and Fischer “stresses the fact that in a large number of joking judgments differences rather than similarities are found” (4). Here is the other side of wit, representing the “reasoning, soundness and astuteness”; it is the exercise of sound judgment.
This is perhaps why Freud uses (or is translated as using) “coupling” [Note: some translations, like Bartleby.com’s use “union”] It’s not just the linking of dissimilar things, but also finding dissimilarities in things that are already linked. They are connected or paired, either prior to or because of the comedian’s work. Either way, this is the “revealing of something hidden or concealed,” that Freud and Fischer stress is true of caricatures and jokes.
Freud then goes into three “more or less interrelated ideas” (4). These seem to be logically subsets of coupling of the dissimilar, which is what the order Freud put them in suggests, so I’ve represented them as such.
Contrasting ideas
Freud quotes Emil Kraeplin, who defines a joke as,
[T]he arbitrary connecting or linking, usually by means of a verbal association, of two ideas which in some way contrast with each other (4).
So here we again see a restatement of wit in the form of contrast or judgment – Fischer’s finding of differences. They are linked (or coupled) by the joker to create a contrast effect. One popular contrast is between sense and nonsense.
Sense in nonsense
Freud says of finding sense in nonsense (or visa versa),
What at one moment has seemed to us to have a meaning, we now see is completely meaningless. That is what, in this case, constitutes the comic process… A remark seems to us to be a joke, if we attribute a significance to it that has psychological necessity and, as soon as we have done so, deny it again. (5)
This plays out various understandings:
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We attach sense to a remark and know that logically it cannot have any.
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We discover truth in it, which nevertheless, according to the laws of experience and our general habits of thought, we cannot find in it.
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We grant it logical or practical consequences in excess of its true content, only to deny these consequences as son as we have clearly recognized the nature of the remark. (5)
Or, in short form, first:
- We attach sense
- We discover truth
- We grant consequences
Then: we become conscious of or get the impression that the things we’ve attached or discovered or granted are, in fact, “relative nothingness” (5).
Another place where this plays out that Freud doesn’t note is the figure of the wise fool, both in the fool who is wise and in the supposedly wise who act foolish. As this version would have it, in the former case (wise fool), we attach sense, discover truth or grant consequences to their statements and actions; we think they are “speaking truth to power.” Then we remember that they are, after all, fools, so there is nothing to guarantee that it actually made sense, was in fact true, or that they can produce consequences. We must now treat their statements and actions as suspect.
In the latter case (the wise who acts the fool), we likewise attach sense, discover truth or grant consequences to their statements and actions, but then recognize that they are not speaking in earnest, and thus again, there is nothing to guarantee that it actually made sense, was in fact true, or that they can produce consequences
This shift from meaningful to meaningless is said, Freud notes, to be the basis of the comic, and he wonders if it also contributes to defining jokes.
The succession of bewilderment and enlightenment/illumination
Freud notes that Immanuel Kant has previously said that the comic is “remarkable,” in that it can “deceive us only for a moment” (5). Gerard Heymans gives the example of a bit of wordplay, in which a poor character boasts that a Baron “had treated him quite as his equal – quite famillionairely” (5). Freud and Heymans argue that at first the word seems “wrongly constructed,” “unintelligible, incomprehensible and puzzling. It accordingly bewilders,” but then we “get it,” we understand the word and are enlightened, the hidden or concealed is once again revealed (5).
More recent “gurus” of stand-up, like Jerry Corley who founded Comedy Clinic, unknowingly (or at least “unacknowledgingly”) reference this when they say things like “the number one element that triggers human laughter is SURPRISE.” When surprised, people are initially bewildered or confused. However, we should note with Freud and company that the surprise can only last for a moment, they must then be enlightened or reach clarity, or they won’t “get it.” As I noted in describing Incongruity and expectancy violation theory, Kenneth Burke has noted that you have to surprise them with something they should have seen coming.
Lipps argues that the enlightenment or illumination has two stages:
- We understand the meaning of the word
- “[W]e realize that this meaningless word has bewildered us and has then shown us its true meaning…. [T]hat a word… has been responsible for the whole thing.” (5).
The second illumination, which is also the “resolution of the problem into nothing” – sense in nonsense – is the only thing (for Lipps) that produces the comic effect (5). However, Freud and Lipps are quick to point out that it isn’t the word that did the work, but the person who wrote the joke.
The peculiar brevity of wit
Finally, Freud returns to a view expressed first by Shakespeare, but echoed by Jean Paul Richter that “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Lipps notes,
A joke says what it has to say, not always in few words, but in too few words – that is, in words that are insufficient by strict logic or by common modes of thought and speech. It may even actually say what it has to say by not saying it. (6)
Any course or book on comedy will tell you that word economy is key. You have to find a way to get to the punchline as quickly and smoothly as possible (unless you’re off on a tangent, but that tangent must also be quick, or you’ve lost the main joke). Words should be chosen for maximum impact.
All of these are “truisms” about comedy for Freud, needing no extensive proof to support their acceptance.
Freud’s project
The problem for Freud, as previously noted, is there’s no unified theory that relates all the criteria and characteristics to one another.
We are entirely without insight into the connection that presumably exists between the separate determinants…. We need to be told, further, whether a joke must satisfy all these determinants in order to be a proper joke, or need only satisfy some, and if so, which can be replaced by others and which are indispensable. We should also wish to have a grouping and classification of jokes on the basis of the characteristics considered essential (6-7).
Freud moves pretty fast, so to clarify, I will break each chapter into parts, and address each part in a separate post, broken up by posts by some of Freud’s critics. I’m currently working through The Purloined Punch Line, by Jerry Aline Flieger, so I’ll start there.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
