Wit and its relation to the unconscious — Sigmund Freud
Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious | Project Gutenberg You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : Wit and its relation to the unconscious Author : Sigmund Freud Translator : A. A. Brill Release date : April 20, 2025 [eBook #75915] Language : English Original publication : New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1916 Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75915 Credits : Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) *** START OF WIT AND ITS RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS BY Professor Dr. SIGMUND FREUD, LL.D. Authorized English Edition, with Introduction by A. A. BRILL, Ph.B. , M.D. Lecturer in Psychoanalysis and Abnormal Psychology, New York University; former Chief of Clinic of Psychiatry, Columbia University NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 1916 Copyright, 1916, BY MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY New York All Rights Reserved Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious | Project Gutenberg TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE In 1908 when it was agreed between Professor Freud and myself that I should be his translator, it was decided to render into English first the following five works: Selected Papers on Hysteria and Psychoneuroses , [1] Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex , [2] The Interpretation of Dreams , [3] Psychopathology of Everyday Life , [4] and the present volume. These works were selected because they represent the various stages of development of Professor Freud’s Psychoanalysis, [5] and also because it was thought that they contain the material which one must master before one is able to judge correctly the author’s theories or apply them in practice. This undertaking, which was fraught with many linguistic and other difficulties, has finally been accomplished with the edition of the present volume, and it is therefore with a sense of great satisfaction that the translator’s preface to this work is written. But although the original task is finished the translator’s work is only beginning. Psychoanalysis has made enormous strides. On the foundation laid by Professor Freud there developed a literature rich in ideas and content which has revolutionized the science of nervous and mental diseases, and has thrown much light on the subject of dreams, sex, mythology, [6] the history of civilization and racial psychology, [7] philology, [8] æsthetics, [9] child psychology and pedagogics, [10] philology, [11] and mysticism and occultism. With the Interpretation of Dreams and Psychopathology of Everyday Life , Professor Freud has definitely bridged the gulf between normal and abnormal mental states by demonstrating that dreams and faulty acts like some forms of forgetting, slips of the tongue, slips of reading, writing, etc., are closely allied to psychopathological states and represent the prototypes of such abnormal mental conditions as neurotic symptoms, hallucinations, and deliria. He also shows that all these productions are senseful and purposive, and that their strange and peculiar appearance is due to distortions produced by various psychic processes. These views are confirmed in the present volume, where it is demonstrated that wit, which belongs to æsthetics, is subject to the same laws, shows the same mechanism, and serves the same tendencies as the other psychic productions. With his wonted profundity and ingenuity the author adds the solution of wit to those of the neuroses, dreams, and psychopathological acts. I take great pleasure in tendering my thanks to Mr. Horatio Winslow, who has read the manuscript and has given me valuable suggestions in the choice of expressions and in the selection of substitutes for those witticisms that could not be translated. A. A. Brill. May, 1916. Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious | Project Gutenberg CONTENTS A. ANALYSIS OF WIT CHAPTER PAGE I. Introduction 3 II. The Technique of Wit 15 III. The Tendencies of Wit 127 B. SYNTHESIS OF WIT IV. The Pleasure Mechanism and the Psychogenesis of Wit 177 V. The Motives of Wit and Wit as a Social Process 214 C. THEORIES OF WIT VI. The Relation of Wit to Dreams and to the Unconscious 249 VII. Wit and the Various Forms of the Comic 288 Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious | Project Gutenberg A. ANALYSIS WIT AND ITS RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS I INTRODUCTION Whoever has had occasion to examine that part of the literature of æsthetics and psychology dealing with the nature and affinities of wit, will, no doubt, concede that our philosophical inquiries have not awarded to wit the important rôle that it plays in our mental life. One can recount only a small number of thinkers who have penetrated at all deeply into the problems of wit. To be sure, among the authors on wit one finds the illustrious names of the poet Jean Paul (Fr. Richter), and of the philosophers Th. Vischer, Kuno Fischer, and Th. Lipps. But even these writers put the subject of wit in the background while their chief interest centers around the more comprehensive and more alluring problems of the comic. In the main this literature gives the impression that it is altogether impractical to study wit except when treated as a part of the comic. Presentation of the Subject by Other Authors According to Th. Lipps ( Komik und Humor , 1898 [12] ) wit is “essentially the subjective side of the comic; i.e., it is that part of the comic which we ourselves create, which colors our conduct as such, and to which our relation is that of Superior Subject, never of Object, certainly not Voluntary Object” (p. 80). The following comment might also be added:—In general we designate as wit “every conscious and clever evocation of the comic, whether the comic element lies in the vi