My VIews on the part played by sexuality in the aetiology of the neuroses 5 страница

¹ There is another factor operating in the technique of this joke which I reserve for later discussion. It concerns the actual nature of the modification (representation by the opposite or by something absurd). There is nothing to prevent the joke-technique from simultaneously employing several methods; but these we can only get to know one by one.3

Herr N. made use of almost the same modification in the case of a gentleman who became Minister for Agriculture with the sole qualification of being himself a farmer. Public opinion had occasion to recognize that he was the least gifted holder of the office that there had ever been. When he had resigned his office and retired to his farming interests, Herr N. said of him, ‘Like Cincinnatus, he has gone back to his place before the plough.’

The Roman, however, who had also been called away to office from the plough, returned to his place behind the plough. What went before the plough, both then and to-day, was only - an ox.¹

Karl Kraus was responsible for another successful condensation with slight modification. He wrote of a certain yellow-press journalist that he had travelled to one of the Balkan States by ‘Orienterpresszug’.² There is no doubt that this word combines two others: ‘Orientexpresszug [Orient Express]’ and ‘Erpressung [blackmail]’. Owing to the context, the element ‘Erpressung’ emerges only as a modification of the ‘Orientexpresszug’ - a word called for by the verb [‘travelled’]. This joke, which presents itself in the guise of a misprint, has yet another claim on our interest.

This series of examples could easily be further increased; but I do not think we require any fresh instances to enable us to grasp clearly the characteristics of the technique in this second group - condensation with modification. If we compare the second group with the first, whose technique consisted in condensation with the formation of composite words, we shall easily see that the difference between them is not an essential one and that the transitions between them are fluid. Both the formation of composite words and modification can be subsumed under the concept of the formation of substitutes; and, if we care to, we can also describe the formation of a composite word as a modification of the basic word by a second element.

¹ [‘Ochs’ in German has much the same meaning as ‘ass’ in English.]

² [A non-existent word.]4 But here we may make a first stop and ask ourselves with what factor known to us from the literature of the subject this first finding of ours coincides, wholly or in part. Evidently with the factor of brevity, which Jean Paul describes as ‘the soul of wit’ (p. 1619 above). But brevity does not in itself constitute a joke, or otherwise every laconic remark would be one. The joke’s brevity must be of a particular kind. It will be recalled that Lipps has tried to describe this particular brevity of jokes more precisely (p. 1619). Here our investigation contributes something and shows that the brevity of jokes is often the outcome of a particular process which has left behind in the wording of the joke a second trace - the formation of a substitute. By making use of the procedure of reduction, which seeks to undo the peculiar process of condensation, we also find, however, that the joke depends entirely on its verbal expression as established by the process of condensation. Our whole interest now turns, of course, to this strange process, which has hitherto scarcely been examined. Nor can we in the least understand how all that is valuable in a joke, the yield of pleasure that the joke brings us, can originate from that process.

Are processes similar to those which we have described here as the technique of jokes known already in any other field of mental events? They are - in a single field, and an apparently very remote one. In 1900 I published a book which, as its title (The Interpretation of Dreams) indicates, attempted to throw light on what is puzzling in dreams and to establish them as derivatives of our normal mental functioning. I found occasion there to contrast the manifest, and often strange, content of the dream with the latent, but perfectly logical, dream-thoughts from which the dream is derived; and I entered into an investigation of the processes which make the dream out of the latent dream-thoughts, as well as of the psychical forces which are involved in that transformation. To the totality of these transforming processes I gave the name of the ‘dream-work’; and I have described as a part of this dream-work a process of condensation which shows the greatest similarity to the one found in the technique of jokes - which, like it, leads to abbreviation, and creates substitute-formations of the same character. Everyone will be familiar, from a recollection of his own dreams, with the composite structures both of people and of things which emerge in dreams. Indeed, dreams even construct them out of words, and they can then be dissected in analysis. (For instance, ‘Autodidasker’ = ‘Autodidakt’ + ‘Lasker’.) On other occasions - much more often, in fact - what the work of condensation in dreams produces is not composite structures but pictures which exactly resemble one thing or one person except for an addition or alteration derived from another source - modifications, that is, just like those in Herr N.’s jokes. We cannot doubt that in both cases we are faced by the same psychical process, which we may recognize from its identical results. Such a far-reaching analogy between the technique of jokes and the dream-work will undoubtedly increase our interest in the former and raise an expectation in us that a comparison between jokes and dreams may help to throw light on jokes. But we will refrain from entering upon this task, for we must reflect that so far we have investigated the technique of only a very small number of jokes, so that we cannot tell whether the analogy by which we are proposing to be guided will in fact hold good. We will therefore turn away from the comparison with dreams and go back to the technique of jokes, though at this point we shall, as it were, be leaving a loose end to our enquiry, which at some later stage we may perhaps pick up once more.

5 The first thing that we want to learn is whether the process of condensation with substitute-formation is to be discovered in every joke, and can therefore be regarded as a universal characteristic of the technique of jokes.

Here I recall a joke which has remained in my memory owing to the special circumstances in which I heard it. One of the great teachers of my young days, whom we thought incapable of appreciating a joke and from whom we had never heard a joke of his own, came into the Institute one day laughing, and, more readily than usual, explained to us what it was that had caused his cheerful mood. ‘I have just read an excellent joke’, he said. ‘A young man was introduced into a Paris salon, who was a relative of the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau and bore his name. Moreover he was red-haired. But he behaved so awkwardly that the hostess remarked critically to the gentleman who had introduced him: "Vous m’avez fait connaître un jeune homme roux et sot, mais non pas un Rousseau."'¹ And he laughed again.

By the nomenclature of the authorities this would be classed as a ‘Klangwitz’,² and one of an inferior sort, with a play upon a proper name - not unlike the joke, for instance, in the Capuchin monk’s sermon in Wallensteins Lager, which, as is well known, is modelled on the style of Abraham a Santa Clara:

Lässt sich nennen den Wallenstein,

ja freilich ist er uns allen ein Stein

des Anstosses und Ärgernisses.³

But what is the technique of this joke? We see at once that the characteristic that we may have hoped to be able to prove was a universal one is absent on the very first fresh occasion. There is no omission here, and scarcely an abbreviation. The lady herself says straight out in the joke almost everything that we can attribute to her thoughts. ‘You had raised my expectations about a relative of Jean-Jacques Rousseau - perhaps a spiritual relative - and here he is: a red-haired silly young man, a roux et sot.’ It is true that I have been able to make an interpolation; but this attempt at a reduction has not got rid of the joke. It remains, and is attached to the identity of sound of the words

ROSSEAU

—————

ROUX SOT It thus proved that condensation with substitute-formation has no share in the production of this joke.

¹ [‘You have made me acquainted with a young man who is roux (red-haired) and sot (silly), but not a Rousseau.’ ‘Roux-sot’ would be pronounced exactly like ‘Rousseau’.]

² [‘Sound-joke.’]

³ [Literally: ‘He gets himself called Wallenstein, and indeed he is for allen (all) of us a Stein (stone) of offence and trouble.’] - Nevertheless, as a result of another factor, this joke deserves to be more highly thought of. But this can only be indicated later on.

What besides? Fresh attempts at reduction can teach me that the joke remains resistant until the name ‘Rousseau’ is replaced by another. If, for instance, I put ‘Racine’ instead of it, the lady’s criticism, which remains just as possible as before, loses every trace of being a joke. I now know where I have to look for the technique of this joke, though I may still hesitate over formulating it. I will try this: the technique of the joke lies in the fact that one and the same word - the name - appears in it used in two ways, once as a whole, and again cut up into its separate syllables like a charade.

I can bring up a few examples which have an identical technique.

An Italian lady is said to have revenged herself for a tactless remark of the first Napoleon’s with a joke having this same technique of the double use of a word. At a court ball, he said to her, pointing to her fellow countrymen: ‘Tutti gli Italiani danzano si male.’ To which she made the quick repartee: ‘Non tutti, ma buona parte.’¹ (Brill, 1911.)

Once when the Antigone was produced in Berlin, the critics complained that the production was lacking in the proper character of antiquity. Berlin wit made the criticism its own in the following words: ‘Antik? Oh, nee.

’² (Vischer, 1846-57, 1, 429, and Fischer, 1889.)

An analogous dividing-up joke is at home in medical circles. If one enquires from a youthful patient whether he has ever had anything to do with masturbation, the answer is sure to be: ‘O na, nie!’³

¹ [‘All Italians dance so badly!’ ‘Not all, but buona parte (a good part)' - the original, Italian version of Napoleon’s surname.]

² [‘Antique? Oh, no.’ The words, in Berlin dialect, approximate in pronunciation to ‘Antigone’.]

³ [‘Oh, no, never!’ ‘Onanie (onanism)' is the common German word for ‘masturbation’.]

In all three of these examples, which should suffice for this species, we see the same joke-technique: in each of them a name is used twice, once as a whole and again divided up into its separate syllables, which, when they are thus separated, give another sense.¹

The multiple use of the same word, once as a whole and again in the syllables into which it falls, is the first instance we have come across of a technique differing from that of condensation. But the profusion of examples that have met us must convince us after a little reflection that the newly-discovered technique can scarcely be limited to this one method. There are a number of possible ways - how many it is as yet quite impossible to guess - in which the same word or the same verbal material can be put to multiple uses in one sentence. Are all these possibilities to be regarded as technical methods of making jokes? It seems to be so. And the examples of jokes which follow will prove it.

¹ The goodness of these jokes depends on the fact that another technical method of a far higher order is simultaneously brought into use (see below). - At this point I may also draw attention to a connection between jokes and riddles. The philosopher Brentano composed a kind of riddle in which a small number of syllables had to be guessed which when they were put together into words gave a different sense according as they were grouped in one way or another. For instance: ‘... liess mich das Platanenblatt ahnen’ [‘the plane-tree leaf (Platanenblatt) led me to think (ahnen)', where ‘Platanen’ and ‘blatt ahnen’ sound almost the same]. Or: ‘wie du dem Inder hast verschrieben, in der Hast verschrieben’ [‘when you wrote a prescription for the Indian, in your haste you made a slip of the pen’, where ‘Inder hast (have to the Indian)' and ‘in der hast (in your haste)' sound the same.]

The syllables to be guessed were inserted into the appropriate place in the sentence under the disguise of the repeated sound ‘dal’. [Thus the English example would be stated: ‘he said he would daldaldaldal daldaldaldal.’] A colleague of the philosopher’s took a witty revenge on him when he heard of the elderly man’s engagement. He asked: ‘Daldaldal daldaldal?’ - ‘Brentano brennt-a-no?’ [‘Brentano - does he still burn?’]

What is the difference between these daldal riddles and the jokes in the text above? In the former the technique is given as a precondition and the wording has to be guessed; while in the jokes the wording is given and the technique is disguised.

In the first place, one can take the same verbal material and merely make some alteration in its arrangement. The slighter the alteration - the more one has the impression of something different being said in the same words - the better is the joke technically.

‘Mr. and Mrs. X live in fairly grand style. Some people think that the husband has earned a lot and so has been able to lay by a bit [sich etwas zurückgelegt]; others again think that the wife has lain back a bit [sich etwas zurückgelegt] and so has been able to earn a lot.’¹

A really diabolically ingenious joke! And achieved with such an economy of means! ‘Earned a lot - lay by a bit [sich etwas zurückgelegt]; lain back a bit [sich etwas zurückgelegt] - earned a lot.’ It is merely the inversion of these two phrases that distinguishes what is said about the husband from what is hinted about the wife. Here again, by the way, this is not the whole technique of the joke.²

A wide field of play lies open to the technique of jokes if we extend the ‘multiple use of the same material’ to cover cases in which the word (or words) in which the joke resides may occur once unaltered but the second time with a slight modification. Here, for instance, is another of Herr N.’s jokes:

He heard a gentleman who was himself born a Jew make a spiteful remark about the Jewish character. ‘Herr Hofrat’, he said, ‘your antesemitism was well-known to me; your anti-semitism is new to me.’

Here only a single letter is altered, whose modification could scarcely be noticed in careless speech. The example reminds us of Herr N.’s other modification jokes (on p. 1631 ff.), but the difference is that here there is no condensation; everything that has to be said is said in the joke itself: ‘I know that earlier you were yourself a Jew; so I am surprised that you should speak ill of Jews.’

¹ Daniel Spitzer, 1912, 1, 280.

² [Footnote added 1912:] This is also true of the excellent joke reported by Brill from Oliver Wendell Holmes: ‘Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.’ Here there is promise of an antithesis but it does not materialize. The second part of the sentence cancels the antithesis. Incidentally, this is a good instance of the untranslatability of jokes with this technique.9

An admirable example of a modification joke of this kind is the well-known cry: ‘Traduttore - Traditore!’¹ The similarity, amounting almost to identity, of the two words represents most impressively the necessity which forces a translator into crimes against his original.²

The variety of possible slight modifications in such jokes is so great that none of them exactly resembles another.

Here is a joke that is said to have been made during an examination in jurisprudence. The candidate had to translate a passage in the Corpus Juris: ‘"Labeo ait"... I fall, says he.’ ‘You fail, say I’, replied the examiner, and the examination was at an end. Anyone who mistakes the name of the great jurist for a verbal form, and moreover one wrongly recalled, no doubt deserves nothing better. But the technique of the joke lies in the fact that almost the same words which proved the ignorance of the candidate were used to pronounce his punishment by the examiner. The joke is, moreover, an example of ‘ready repartee’, the technique of which, as we shall see, does not differ greatly from what we are illustrating here.

Words are a plastic material with which one can do all kinds of things. There are words which, when used in certain connections, have lost their original full meaning, but which regain it in other connections. A joke of Lichtenberg’s carefully singles out circumstances in which the watered-down words are bound to regain their full meaning:

‘"How are you getting along?"³ the blind man asked the lame man. "As you see", the lame man replied to the blind man.’

There are, too, words in German that can be taken, according as they are ‘full’ or ‘empty’, in a different sense, and, indeed, in more than one. For there can be two different derivatives from the same stem, one of which has developed into a word with a full meaning and the other into a watered-down final syllable or suffix, both of which, however, are pronounced exactly the same. The identity of sound between a full word and a watered-down syllable may also be a chance one. In both cases the joke-technique can take advantage of the conditions thus prevailing in the linguistic material.

¹ [‘Translator - traitor!’]

² [Footnote added 1912:] Brill quotes a quite analogous modification joke: Amantes amentes (lovers are fools).

³ [‘Wie geht’s?’ Literally, ‘how do you walk?’]0

A joke, for instance, which is attributed to Schleiermacher, is of importance to us as being an almost pure example of these technical methods: ‘Eifersucht [jealousy] is a Leidenschaft [passion] which mit Eifer sucht [with eagerness seeks] what Leiden schafft [causes pain].’

This is undeniably in the nature of a joke, though not particularly effective as one. A quantity of factors are absent here which might mislead us in analysing other jokes so long as we examined each of those factors separately. The thought expressed in the wording is worthless; the definition it gives of jealousy is in any case thoroughly unsatisfactory. There is not a trace of ‘sense in nonsense’, of ‘hidden meaning’ or of ‘bewilderment and illumination’. No efforts will reveal a ‘contrast of ideas’: a contrast between the words and what they mean can be found only with great difficulty. There is no sign of abbreviation; on the contrary, the wording gives an impression of prolixity. And yet it is a joke, and even a very perfect one. At the same time, its only striking characteristic is the one in the absence of which the joke disappears: the fact that here the same words are put to multiple uses. We can then choose whether to include this joke in the sub-class of those in which words are used first as a whole and then divided up (e.g. Rousseau or Antigone) or in the other sub-class in which the multiplicity is produced by the full or the watered-down meaning of the verbal constituents. Apart from this, only one other factor deserves notice from the point of view of the technique of jokes. We find here an unusual state of things established: a kind of ‘unification’ has taken place, since ‘Eifersucht [jealousy]’ is defined by means of its own name - by means of itself, as it were. This, as we shall see, is also a technique of jokes. These two factors, therefore, must in themselves be sufficient to give a remark the character of a joke.

If now we enter still further into the variety of forms of the ‘multiple use’ of the same word, we suddenly notice that we have before us examples of ‘double meaning’ or ‘play upon words’ - forms which have long been generally known and recognized as a technique of jokes. Why have we taken the trouble to discover afresh what we might have gathered from the most superficial essay on jokes? To begin with, we can only plead in our own justification that we have nevertheless brought out another aspect of the same phenomenon of linguistic expression. What is supposed by the authorities to show the character of jokes as a kind of ‘play’ has been classified by us under the heading of ‘multiple use’.

The further cases of multiple use, which can also be brought together under the title of ‘double meaning’ as a new, third group, can easily be divided into sub-classes, which, it is true, cannot be separated from one another by essential distinctions any more than can the third group as a whole from the second. We find:

(a) Cases of the double meaning of a name and of a thing denoted by it. For instance: ‘Discharge thyself of our company, Pistol!‘ (Shakespeare.)

‘More Hof than Freiung ' said a witty Viennese about a number of pretty girls who had been admired for many years but had never found a husband. ‘Hof’ and ‘Freiung’ are the names of two neighbouring squares in the centre of Vienna.

‘Vile Macbeth does not rule here in Hamburg: the ruler here is Banko.’ (Heine.)

Where the name cannot be used (we should perhaps say ‘misused’) unaltered, a double meaning can be got out of it by one of the slight modifications we are familiar with:

‘Why’, it was asked, in times that are now past, ‘have the French rejected Lohengrin?’ ‘On Elsa’s (Elsass [Alsace]) account.’

(b) Double meaning arising from the literal and metaphorical meanings of a word. This is one of the most fertile sources for the technique of jokes. I will quote only one example:

A medical friend well-known for his jokes once said to Arthur Schnitzler the dramatist: ‘I’m not surprised that you’ve become a great writer. After all your father held a mirror up to his contemporaries.’ The mirror which was handled by the dramatist’s father, the famous Dr. Schnitzler, was the laryngoscope. A well-known remark of Hamlet’s tells us that the purpose of a play, and so also of the dramatist who creates it, is ‘to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.’ (III, 2.)

(c) Double meaning proper, or play upon words. This may be described as the ideal case of ‘multiple use’. Here no violence is done to the word; it is not cut up into its separate syllables, it does not need to be subjected to any modification, it does not have to be transferred from the sphere it belongs to (the sphere of proper names, for instance) to another one. Exactly as it is and as it stands in the sentence, it is able, thanks to certain favourable circumstances, to express two different meanings.

Examples of this are at our disposal in plenty:

One of Napoleon III’s first acts when he assumed power was to seize the property of the House of Orleans. This excellent play upon words was current at the time: ‘C’est le premier vol de l’aigle.’ [‘It is the eagle’s first vol.’] ‘Vol’ means ‘flight’ but also ‘theft’. (Quoted by Fischer, 1889.)

Louis XV wanted to test the wit of one of his courtiers, of whose talent he had been told. At the first opportunity he commanded the gentleman to make a joke of which he, the king, should be the ‘sujet '. The courtier at once made the clever reply: ‘Le roi n’est pas sujet.’ [‘The King is not a subject.’]

A doctor, as he came away from a lady’s bedside, said to her husband with a shake of his head: ‘I don’t like her looks.’ ‘I’ve not liked her looks for a long time’, the husband hastened to agree.

The doctor was of course referring to the lady’s condition; but he expressed his anxiety about the patient in words which the husband could interpret as a confirmation of his own marital aversion.

Heine said of a satirical comedy: ‘This satire would not have been so biting if its author had had more to bite.’ This joke is more an example of metaphorical and literal double meaning than of a play upon words proper. But what is to be gained by drawing a sharp distinction here?

Another good example of play upon words is told by the authorities (Heymans and Lipps) in a form which makes it unintelligible. Not long ago I came upon the correct version and setting of the anecdote in a collection of jokes which has not proved of much use apart from this.¹

‘One day Saphir and Rothschild met each other. After they had chatted for a little while, Saphir said: "Listen, Rothschild, my funds have got low, you might lend me a hundred ducats." "Oh well!", said Rothschild, "that’ll suit me all right - but only on condition that you make a joke." "That’ll suit me all right too", replied Saphir. "Good. Then come to my office tomorrow." Saphir appeared punctually. "Ah!", said Rothschild, when he saw him come in, "Sie kommen um Ihre 100 Dukaten." "No", answered Saphir, "Sie kommen um Ihre 100 Dukaten because I shan’t dream of paying you back before the Day of Judgement.’²

¹ Hermann, 1904.

² [‘Sie kommen um...’ may mean equally ‘You are coming about’ or ‘You are losing’.] -’"Saphir", so Heymans tells us, "was asked by a rich creditor whom he had come to visit: ‘Sie kommen wohl um die 300 Gulden? [No doubt you’ve come about the 300 florins?]’ and he replied: ‘Nein, Sie kommen um die 300 Gulden [No, you’re going to lose the 300 florins].’ In giving this answer he was expressing his meaning in a perfectly correct and by no means unusual form." That is in fact the case. Saphir’s answer, considered in itself, is in perfect order. We understand, too, what he means to say - namely that he has no intention of paying his debt. Rut Saphir makes use of the same words that had previously been used by his creditor. We therefore cannot avoid also taking them in the sense in which they had been used by the latter. And in that case Saphir’s answer no longer has any meaning whatever. The creditor is not "coming" at all. Nor can he be coming "about the 300 florins" - that is, he cannot be coming to bring 300 florins. Moreover, as a creditor, it is not his business to bring but to demand. Since Saphir’s words are in this way recognized as being at once sense and nonsense, a comic situation arises.’ (Lipps, 1898, 97.)

The version which I have given in full in the text above for the sake of clarity shows that the technique of the joke is far simpler than Lipps supposes. Saphir does not come to bring the 300 florins but to fetch them from the rich man. Accordingly the discussions of ‘sense and nonsense’ in this joke become irrelevant.4

‘What do these statues vorstellen [represent or put forward]?’ asked a stranger to Berlin of a native Berliner, looking at a row of monuments in a public square. ‘Oh, well,’ was the reply: ‘either their right leg or their left leg.’

‘At this moment I cannot recall all the students’ names, and of the professors there are some who still have no name at all.’ (Heine, Harzreise.)

We shall be giving ourselves practice, perhaps, in diagnostic differentiation if at this point we insert another well-known joke about professors. ’The distinction between Professors Ordinary [ordentlich] and Professors Extraordinary [ausserordentlich] is that the ordinary ones do nothing extraordinary and the extraordinary ones do nothing properly [ordentlich].’ This, of course, is a play on the two meanings of the words ‘

ordentlich’ and ‘ausserordentlich’: viz. on the one hand ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the ‘ordo (the Establishment)' and on the other hand ‘efficient’ and ‘outstanding’. But the conformity between this joke and some others we have already met reminds us that here the ‘multiple use’ is far more noticeable than the ‘double meaning’. All through the sentence we hear nothing but a constantly recurring ‘ordentlich’, sometimes in that form and sometimes modified in a negative sense. (Cf. p. 1639.) Moreover, the feat is again achieved here of defining a concept by means of its own wording (cf. the example of ‘Eifersucht’, p. 1640), or, more precisely, of defining (even if only negatively) two correlative concepts by means of one another, which produces an ingenious interlacement. Finally, the aspect of ‘unification’ can also be stressed here - the eliciting of a more intimate connection between the elements of the statement than one would have had a right to expect from their nature.

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