Freud wrote Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905) at nearly the same time as Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), but here pleasure is approached from the angle of wit and its mechanisms and motives. In this work Freud further develops his principal discoveries on mental activity described in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), already containing a reference to wit in the structure of dreams.
Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious is divided into three sections: analytic, synthetic, and theoretical. As in The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud discusses at length the theories of philosophers (Theodor Vischer, Kuno Fischer, Theodor Lipps) and writers (Jean Paul, Heinrich Heine, Georg Licthenberg), and gives examples from Jewish folklore in the self-analytical part of the book. This self-analysis is as essential here as it was in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901).
The first part (analytic) is essentially descriptive: the mechanisms of jokes makes use of the principal elements of dream work, which Freud summarises, providing an overview of the techniques used in telling jokes. As with dreams, these mechanisms are unconscious and can only be determined after the fact. But to these mechanisms Freud adds the element of meaning, that is, the aims of wit, the pleasurable or hostile satisfaction obtained in telling jokes. It is this meaning he attaches to humour that makes his investigation of jokes profound.
The second part (synthetic) investigates the pleasure of jokes and its mechanisms and building on the work of Gustav Theodore Fechner, Freud makes use of ideas developed earlier in the Project for a Scientific Psychology [1895]). The distinction between jokes and the comic allowed Freud to emphasize that the former is essentially a social activity requiring the presence of a third party, or other people. The activity is further complicated by the fact that group ,as well as individual, dynamics are at play: "Why are we driven to tell our own joke to someone else? . . . Because we are unable to laugh at it ourselves" (Freud, 1905c, p. 190). Hence the famous Freudian joke, “ a man is marooned on a desert island with Pamela Anderson. They have sex. He says Pam will you do me a favour ? She says “ Sure, what?” He says will you put on this false moustache and use a gruff voice. She says “OK” not knowing where this is going. When she does this he goes up to her nudges her in the ribs and says “Guess what, I slept with Pamela Anderson.”
The third part (theoretical) returns to the comparison between dreams and jokes, but from the point of view of the unconscious. Freud indicated that he hoped to convince readers of the richness of his ideas presented in 1900 in 'The Interpretation of Dreams' , which were often reduced to the simple idea of "wish fulfillment." He also related his theories to those of Theodor Lipps and noted "there is a return of the mind in dreams to an embryonic point of view" (p. 211). In the pleasure of jokes, adults discover again the infantile as a source of the unconscious: this is most clearly illustrated by clowning -such as slipping on banana skins or by play with words and thoughts. The chapter closes with an analysis of the varieties of the comic, which is more difficult to analyse because it is not a process elaborated like a dream or joke but an encounter with a situation. According to Freud, "The comic arises in the first instance as an unintended discovery derived from human social relations" (1905c, p. 234). The production of the comic (imitation, parody) highlights a narcissistic, self-loving,aspect of the mind, that is, the comparison of self and other. How could he/she behave like such an idiot.
The book concludes with some of Freud's subtlest and richest ideas about the subject, namely the distinction between humour and irony. He returned to this distinction in his short article on humour in 1927.
Though this book has not always received the attention it deserves, it is definitely an important work. Lacan (1998) discussed it in his seminar on the formations of the unconscious a reommendation in itself.
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