288

VII

WIT AND THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC

We have approached the problems of the
comic in an unusual manner. It appeared to us
that wit, which is usually regarded as a sub-
species of the comic, offered enough peculiarities
to warrant our taking it directly under consid-
eration, and thus it came about that we avoided
discussing its relation to the more comprehen-
sive category of the comic as long as it was
possible to do so, yet we did not proceed with-
out picking up on the way some hints that
might be valuable for studying the comic. We
found it easy to ascertain that the comic differs
from wit in its social behavior. The comic can
be content with only two persons, one who
finds the comical, and one in whom it is found.
The third person to whom the comical may be
imparted reinforces the comic process, but adds
nothing new to it. In wit, however, this third
person is indispensable for the completion of
the pleasure-
bearing process, while the second
person may be omitted, especially when it is
not a question of aggressive wit with a tend-
 

289

THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC

ency. Wit is made, while the comical is found;
it is found first of all in persons, and only
later by transference may be seen also in ob-
jects, situations, and the like. We know, too,
in the case of wit that it is not strange per-
sons, but one’s own mental processes that con-
tain the sources for the production of pleas-
ure. In addition we have heard that wit oc-
casionally reopens inaccessible sources of the
comic, and that the comic often serves wit as
a façade to replace the fore-pleasure usually
produce by the well-known technique (p.
236). All of this does not really point to a
very simple relationship between wit and the
comic. On the other hand, the problems of the
comic have shown themselves to be so compli-
cated, and have until now so successfully de-
fied all attempts made by the philosophers to
solve them, that we have not been able to
justify the expectation of mastering it by a
sudden stroke, so to speak, even if we approach
it along the paths of wit. Incidentally we
came provided with an instrument for investi-
gating wit that had not yet been made use of
by others; namely, the knowledge of dream-
work. We have no similar advantage at our
disposal for comprehending the comic, and we
may therefore expect that we shall learn noth-
ing about the nature of the comic other than

290

that which we have already become aware of
in wit; in so far as wit belongs to the comic
and retains certain features of the same un-
changed or modified in its own nature.

The Naïve

The species of the comic that is most closely
allied to wit is the naïve. Like the comic the
naïve is found universally and is not made like
in the case of wit. The naïve cannot be made
at all, while in the case of the pure comic the
question of making or evoking the comical may
be taken into account. The naïve must re-
sult without our intervention from the speech
and actions of other persons who take the place
of the second person in the comic or in wit.
The naïve originates when one puts himself
completely outside of inhibition, because it
does not exist for him; that is, if he seems to
overcome it without any effort. What condi-
tions the function of the naïve is the fact that
we are aware that the person does not possess
this inhibition, otherwise we should not call it
naïve but impudent, and instead of laughing
we should be indignant. The effect of the
naïve, which is irresistible, seems easy to under-
stand. An expenditure of that inhibition en-
ergy which is commonly already formed in us

291

suddenly becomes inapplicable when we hear
the naïve and is discharged through laughter;
as the removal of the inhibition is direct, and
not the result of an incited operation, there is
no need for a suspension of attention. We be-
have like the hearer in wit, to whom the econ-
omy of inhibition is given without any effort
on his part.

In view of the understanding about the
genesis of inhibitions which we obtained while
tracing the development of play into wit, it
will not surprise us to learn that the naïve is
mostly found in children, although it may also
be observed in uneducated adults, whom we
look on as children as far as their intellectual
development is concerned. For the purposes
of comparison with wit, naïve speech is nat-
urally better adapted than naïve actions, for
speech and not actions are the usual forms of
expression employed by wit. It is significant,
however, that naïve speeches, such as those of
children, can without straining also be desig-
nated as “naïve witticisms.” The points of
agreement as well as demonstration between
wit and naïveté will become clear to us upon
consideration of a few examples.¹

A little girl of three years was accustomed
to hear from her German nurse the exclamatory

1 Given by Translator.

292

word “Gesundheit” (God bless you!; liter-
ally, may you be healthy!) whenever she hap-
pened to sneeze. While suffering from a se-
vere cold during which the profuse coughing
and sneezing caused her considerable pain, she
pointed to her chest and said to her father,
“Daddy, Gesundheit hurts.”

Another little girl of four years heard her
parents refer to a Jewish acquaintance as a
Hebrew, and on later hearing the latter’s wife
referred to as Mrs. X, she corrected her
mother, saying, “No, that is not her name; if
her husband is a Hebrew she is a Shebrew.”

In the first example the wit is produced
through the use of a contiguous association in
the form of an abstract thought for the con-
crete action. The child so often heard the
word “Gesundheit” associated with sneezing
that she took it for the act itself. While the
second example may be designated as word-
wit formed by the technique of sound similar-
ity. The child divided the word Hebrew into
He-
brew and having been taught the genders
of the personal pronouns, she naturally
imagined that if the man is a He-brew his wife
must be a She-brew. Both examples could
have originated as real witticisms upon which
we would have unwillingly bestowed a little
mild laughter. But as examples of naïveté

293

they seem excellent and cause loud laughter.
But what is it here that produces the difference
between wit and naïveté? Apparently it is
neither the wording nor the technique, which is
the same for both wit and the naïve, but a fac-
tor which at first sight seems remote from both.
It is simply a question whether we assume that
the speakers had the intention of making a wit-
ticism or whether we assume that they—the
children—wished to draw an earnest conclusion,
a conclusion held in good faith though based
on uncorrected knowledge. Only the latter
case is one of naïveté. It is here that our at-
tention is first called to the mechanism in which
the second person places himself into the psy-
chic process of the person who produces the
wit.

The investigation of a third example will
confirm this opinion. A brother and a sister,
the former ten and the latter twelve years old,
produce a play of their own composition before
an audience of uncles and aunts. The scene
represents a hut on the seashore. In the first
act the two dramatist-actors, a poor fisherman
and his devoted wife, complain about the hard
times and the difficulty of getting a livelihood.
The man decides to sail over the wide ocean
in his boat in order to seek wealth elsewhere,
and after a touching farewell the curtain is

294

drawn. The second act takes place several
years later. The fisherman has come home
rich with a big bag of money and tells his wife,
whom he finds waiting in front of the hut,
what good luck he has had in the far countries.
His wife interrupts him proudly, saying: “Nor
have I been idle in the meanwhile,” and opens
the hut, on whose floor the fisherman sees
twelve large dolls representing children asleep.
At this point of the drama the performers
were interrupted by an outburst of laughter
on the part of the audience, a thing which they
could not understand. They stared dum-
founded at their dear relatives, who had thus
far behaved respectably and had listened at-
tentively. The explanation of this laughter
lies in the assumption on the part of the audi-
ence that the young dramatists know nothing
as yet about the origin of children, and were
therefore in a position to believe that a wife
would actually boast of bearing offspring
during the prolonged absence of her husband,
and that the husband would rejoice with her
over it. But the results achieved by the dram-
atists on the basis of this ignorance may be
designated as nonsense or absurdity.

These examples show that the naïve occu-
pies a position midway between wit and the
comic. As far as wording and contents are

295

concerned, the naïve speech is identical with
wit; it produces a misuse of words, a bit of
nonsense, or an obscenity. But the psychic
process of the first person or producer which,
in the case of wit, offered us so much that was
interesting and puzzling, is here entirely ab-
sent. The naïve person imagines that he is
using his thoughts and expressions in a simple
and normal manner; he has no other purpose
in view, and receives no pleasure from his
naïve production. All the characteristics of
the naïve lie in the conception of the hearer,
who corresponds to the third person in the case
of wit. The producing person creates the
naïve without any effort. The complicated
technique, which in wit serves to paralyze the
inhibition produced by the critical reason, does
not exist here, because the person does not pos-
sess this inhibition, and he can therefore read-
ily produce the senseless and the obscene with-
out any compromise. The naïve may be added
to the realm of wit if it comes into existence
after the important function of the censor, as
observed in the formula for wit-formation, has
been reduced to zero.

If the affective determination of wit con-
sists in the fact that both persons should be
subject to about the same inhibitions or inner
resistances, we may say now that the determina-

296

tion of the naïve consists in the fact that one
person should have inhibitions which the other
lacks. It is the person provided with inhibi-
tions who understands the naïve, and it is he
alone who gains the pleasure produced by the
naïve. We can easily understand that this
pleasure is due to the removal of inhibitions.
Since the pleasure of wit is of the same origin
—a kernel of word-pleasure and nonsense-
pleasure, and a shell of removal- and release-
pleasure,—the similarity of this connection to
the inhibition thus determines the inner rela-
tionship between the naïve and wit. In both
cases pleasure results from the removal of in-
ner inhibitions. But the psychic process of the
recipient person (which in the naïve regularly
corresponds with our ego, whereas in wit we
may also put ourselves in place of the produc-
ing person) is by as much more complicated in
the case of the naïve as it is simpler in the pro-
ducing person in wit. For one thing, the
naïve must produce the same effect upon the
receiving person as wit does, this may be fully
confirmed by our examples, for just as in wit
the removal of the censor has been made pos-
sible by the mere effort of hearing the naïve.
But only a part of the pleasure created by the
naïve admits of this explanation, in other cases
of naïve utterances, even this portion would be

297

endangered, as, for example, while listening to
naïve obscenities. We would react to a naïve
obscenity with the same indignation felt to-
ward a real obscenity, were it not for the fact
that another factor saves us from this indigna-
tion and at the same time furnishes the more
important part of the pleasure derived from
the naïve.

This other factor is the result of the condi-
tion mentioned before, namely, that in order to
recognize the naïve we have to be cognizant of
the fact that there are no inner inhibitions in
the producing person. It is only when this is
assured that we laugh instead of being indig-
nant. Hence we take into consideration the
psychic state of the producing person; we
imagine ourselves in this same psychic state
and endeavor to understand it by comparing
it to our own. This putting ourselves into the
psychic state of the producing person and com-
paring it with our own results in an economy
of expenditure which we discharge through
laughing.

We might prefer the simpler explanation,
namely, that when we reflect that the person
has no inhibition to overcome our indignation
becomes superfluous; the laughing therefore
results at the cost of economized indignation.
In order to avoid this conception, which is, in

298

general, misleading, I shall distinguish more
sharply between two cases that I had treated
as one in the above discussion. The naïve, as
it appears to us, may either be in the nature
of a witticism, as in our example, or an obscen-
ity, or of anything generally objectionable;
which becomes especially evident if the naïve
is expressed not in speech but in action.
This latter case is really misleading; for
it might lead one to assume that the pleas-
ure originated from the economized and trans-
formed indignation. The first case is the il-
luminating one. The naïve speech in the ex-
ample “Hebrew” can produce the effect of a
light witticism and give no cause for indigna-
tion; it is certainly the more rare, or the more
pure and by far the more instructive case. In
so far as we think that the child took the sylla-
ble “he” in “Hebrew” seriously, and without
any additional reason identified it with the
masculine personal pronoun, the increase in
pleasure as a result of hearing it has no longer
anything to do with the pleasure of the wit.
We shall now consider what has been said
from two viewpoints, first how it came into
existence in the mind of the child, and sec-
ondly, how it would occur to us. In follow-
ing this comparison we find that the child has
discovered an identity and has overcome bar-

299

riers which exist in us, and by continuing still
further it may express itself as follows: “If
you wish to understand what you have heard,
you may save yourself the expenditure neces-
sary for holding these barriers in place.” The
expenditure which became freed by this com-
parison is the source of pleasure in the naïve,
and is discharged through laughter; to be sure,
it is the same expenditure which we would
have converted into indignation if our under-
standing of the producing person, and in this
case the nature of his utterance, had not pre-
cluded it. But if we take the case of the naïve
joke as a model for the second case, viz., the
objectionable naïve, we shall see that here, too,
the economy in inhibition may originate di-
rectly from the comparison. That is, it is un-
necessary for us to assume an incipient and
then a strangled indignation, an indigna-
tion corresponding to a different application of
the freed expenditure, against which, in the
case of wit, complicated defensive mechanisms
were required.

Source of Comic Pleasure in the Naïve

This comparison and this economy of ex-
penditure that occur as the result of putting
one’s self into the psychic process of the pro-
ducing person can have an important bearing

300

on the naïve only if they do not belong to the
naïve alone. As a matter of fact we suspect
that this mechanism which is so completely
foreign to wit is a part—perhaps the essential
part—of the psychic process of the comic.
This aspect—it is perhaps the most im-
portant aspect of the naïve—thus repre-
sents the naïve as a form of the comic.
Whatever is added to the wit-pleasure by the
naïve speeches in our examples is “comical”
pleasure. Concerning the latter we might be
inclined to make a general assumption that
this pleasure originates through an economized
expenditure by comparing the utterance of
some one else with our own. But since we are
here in the presence of very broad views we
shall first conclude our consideration of the
naïve. The naïve would thus be a form of the
comic, in so far as its pleasure originates from
the difference in expenditure which results in
our effort to understand the other person; and
it resembles wit through the condition that the
expenditure saved by the comparison must be
an inhibition expenditure.¹

¹I have everywhere identified the naïve with the naïve-comic,
a practice which is certainly not permissible in all cases. But
it is sufficient for our purposes to study the characteristics of the
naïve as exhibited by the “naïve joke” and the “naïve obscenity.”
It is our intention to proceed from here with the investigation of
the nature of the comic.

301

THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC

Before concluding we shall rapidly point out
a few agreements and differences between the
conceptions at which we have just arrived and
those that have been known for a long time
in the psychology of the comic. The putting
one’s self into the psychic process of another
and the desire to understand him is obviously
nothing else than the “comic burrowing”
(komisches Leihen) which has played a part
in the analysis of the comic ever since the time
of Jean Paul; the “comparing” of the psychic
process of another with our own corresponds
to a “psychological contrast,” for which we here
at last find a place, after we did not know
what to do with it in wit. But in our ex-
planation of comic pleasure we take issue with
many authors who contend that this pleasure
originates through the fluctuation of our atten-
tion to and fro between contrasting ideas.
We are unable to see how such a mechanism
could produce pleasure, and we point to the
fact that in the comparing of contrasts there
results a difference in expenditure which, if
not used for anything else, becomes capable of
discharge and hence a source of pleasure.¹

¹Also Bergson (Laughter, An essay on the Meaning of the
Comic, translated by Brereton and Rothwell, The Macmillan Co.,
1914) rejects with sound arguments this sort of explanation of
comic pleasure, which has unmistakably been influenced by the
effort to create an analogy to the laughing of a person tickled.

302

It is with misgiving only that we approach
the problem of the comic. It would be pre-
sumptuous to expect from our efforts any de-
cisive contribution to the solution of this problem
after the works of a large number of excellent
thinkers have not resulted in an explanation
that is in every respect satisfactory. As a mat-
ter of fact, we intend simply to follow out into
the province of the comic certain observations
that have been found valuable in the study of wit.

Occurrence and Origin of the Comic

The comical appears primarily as an unin-
tentional discovery in the social relations of
human beings. It is found in persons, that is,
in their movements, shapes, actions, and char-
acteristic traits. In the beginning it is found
probably only in their psychical peculiarities
and later on in their mental qualities, especially
in the expression of these latter. Even animals
and inanimate objects become comical as the
result of a widely used method of personifica-
tion. However, the comical can be considered
apart from the person in whom it is found, if
the conditions under which a person becomes

The explanation of comic pleasure by Lipps which might, in
connection with his conception of the comic, be represented as an
“unexpected trifle,” is of an entirely different nature.

303

THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC

comical can be discerned. Thus arises the com-
ical situation, and this knowledge enables us
to make a person comical at will by putting
him into situations in which the conditions nec-
essary for the comic are bound up with his ac-
tions. The discovery that it is in our power to
make another person comical opens the way to
unsuspected gains in comic pleasure, and forms
the foundation of a highly developed tech-
nique. It is also possible to make one’s self
just as comical as others. The means which
serve to make a person comical are trans-
ference into comic situations, imitations, dis-
guise, unmasking, caricature, parody travesty,
and the like. It is quite evident that these
techniques may enter into the service of hostile
or aggressive tendencies. A person may be
made comical in order to render him contemp-
tible or in order to deprive him of his claims
to dignity and authority. But even if such a
purpose were regularly at the bottom of all at-
tempts to make a person comical this need not
necessarily be the meaning of the spontaneous
comic.

As a result of this superficial survey of the
manifestations of the comic we can readily see
that the comic originates from wide-
spread
sources, and that conditions so specialized as
those found in the naïve cannot be expected

304

in the case of the comic. In order to get a
clue to the conditions that are applicable to
the comic the selection of the first example is
most important. We will examine first the
comic movement because we remember that
the most primitive stage performance, the
pantomime, uses this means to make us laugh.
The answer to the question, Why do we laugh
at the actions of clowns? would be that they
appear to us immoderate and inappropriate;
that is, we really laugh over the excessive ex-
penditure of energy. Let us look for the
same condition outside of the manufactured
comic, that is, under circumstances where it
may unintentionally be found. The child’s
motions do not appear to us comical, even if it
jumps and fidgets, but it is comical to see a
little boy or girl follow with the tongue the
movement of his pen-holder when he is trying
to master the art of writing; we see in these
additional motions a superfluous expenditure
of energy which under similar conditions we
should save. In the same way we find it com-
ical to see unnecessary motions or even
marked exaggeration of expressive motions in
adults. Among the genuinely comic cases we
might mention the motions made by the bowler
after he has released the ball while he is fol-
lowing its course as though he were still able

305

to control it; all grimaces which exaggerate
the normal expression of the emotions are com-
ical, even if they are involuntary, as in the
case of persons suffering from St. Vitus’
dance (chorea); the impassioned movements
of a modern orchestra leader will appear com-
ical to every unmusical person, who cannot
understand why they are necessary. Indeed,
the comic element found in bodily shapes and
physiognomy is a branch of the comic of motion,
in that they are conceived as though they were
the result of motion that either has been carried
too far or is purposeless. Wide exposed eyes,
a crook-shaped nose bent towards the mouth,
handle-like ears, a hunch back, and all similar
physical defects probably produce a comical
impression only in so far as the movements
that would be necessary to produce these
features are imagined, whereby the nose and
other parts of the body are pictured as more
movable than they actually are. It is cer-
tainly comical if some one can “wiggle his
ears,” and it would undoubtedly be a great
deal more comical if he could raise and lower
his nose. A large part of the comical impres-
sion that animals make upon us is due to the fact that
we perceive in them movements which we cannot
imitate.

306

Comic of Motion

But how does it come about that we laugh
as soon as we have recognized that the actions
of some one else are immoderate and inap-
propriate? I believe that we laugh because we
compare the motions observed in others with
those which we ourselves should produce if we
were in their place. The two persons must
naturally be compared in accordance with the
same standard, but this standard is my own
innerva-
tion expenditure connected with my
idea of motion in the one case as well as the
other. This assertion is in need of discus-
sion
and amplification.

What we are here putting into juxtaposition
is, on the one hand, the psychic expenditure of
a given idea, and on the other hand, the con-
tent of this idea. We maintain that the
former is not primarily and principally inde-
pendent of the latter—the content of the
idea—particularly because the idea of some-
thing great requires a larger expenditure
than the idea of something small. As long as
we are concerned only with the idea of differ-
ent coarse movements we shall encounter no
difficulties in the theoreti-
cal determination of
our thesis or in establishing its proof through
obser-
vation. It will be shown that in this case

307

THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC

an attribute of the idea actually coincides with
an attribute of the object conceived, although
psychology warns us of confusions of this sort.

I obtain an idea of a definite coarse move-
ment by performing this motion or by imitat-
ing it, and in so doing I set a standard for
this motion in my feelings of innervation.¹

Now if I perceive a similar more or less
coarse motion in some one else, the surest way
to the understanding—to apperception—of the
same is to carry it out imitatively and the com-
parison will then enable me to decide in which
motion I expended more energy. Such an im-
pulse to imitate certainly arises on perceiving
a movement. But in reality I do not carry
out the imitation any more than I still spell
out words simply because I have learnt to read
by means of spelling. Instead of imitating the
movement by my muscles I substitute the idea
of the same through my memory traces of the
expenditures necessary for similar motions.
Perceiving, or “thinking,” differs above all

¹The recollection of this innervation expenditure will remain
the essential part of the idea of this motion, and there will
always be methods of thought in my psychic life in which the
idea will be represented by nothing else than this expenditure.
In other connections a substitute for this element may possibly
be put in the form of other ideas, for instance the visual idea
of the object of the motion, or it may be put in the form of the
word-idea; and in certain types of abstract thought a sign in-
stead of the full content itself may suffice.

308

from acting or carrying out things by the fact
that it entails a very much smaller displace-
ment of energy and keeps the main expendi-
ture from being discharged. But how is the
quantitative factor, the more or less big ele-
ment of the movement perceived, given ex-
pression in the idea? And if the representa-
tion of the quantity is left off from the idea that
is composed of qualities, how am I to differ-
entiate the ideas of different big movements,
how am I to compare them?

Here, physiology shows the way in that it
teaches us that even while an idea is in the
process of conception innervations proceed to
the muscles, which naturally represent only a
moderate expenditure. It is now easy to as-
sume that this expenditure of innerva-
tion which accompanies the conception of the idea
is utilized to represent the quantitative factor
of the idea, and that when a great motion is
imagined it is greater than it would be in the
case of a small one. The conception of greater
motions would thus actually be greater, that
is, it would be a conception accompanied by
greater expenditure.

Ideational Mimicry

Observation shows directly that human be-
ings are in the habit of expressing the big and

309

small things in their ideation content by means
of a manifold expenditure or by means of a
sort of ideational mimicry.

When a child or a person of the common
people or one belonging to a certain race im-
parts or depicts something, one can easily ob-
serve that he is not content to make his ideas
intelligible to the hearer through the choice of
correct words alone, but that he also repre-
sents the contents of the same through his ex-
pressive motions. Thus he designates the
quantities and intensities of “a high moun-
tain” by raising his hands over his head, and
those of “a little dwarf” by lowering his
hand to the ground. If he broke himself of
the habit of depicting with his hands, he would
nevertheless do it with his voice, and if he
should also control his voice, one may be sure
that in picturing something big he would dis-
tend his eyes, and describing something little
he would press his eyes together. It is not his
own affects that he thus expresses, but it is
really the content of what he imagines.

Shall we now assume that this need for
mimicry is first aroused through the demand
for imparting, whereas a good part of this
manner of representation still escapes the at-
tention of the hearer? I rather believe that this
mimicry, though less vivid, exists even if all

310

imparting is left out of the question, that it
comes about when the person imagines for
himself alone, or thinks of something in a
graphic manner; that then such a person, just
as in talking, expresses through his body the
idea of big and small which manifests itself at
least through a change of innervation in the
facial expressions and sensory organs. Indeed,
I can imagine that the bodily innervation
which is consensual to the content of the idea
conceived is the beginning and origin of mim-
icry for purposes of communication. For, in
order to be in a position to serve this purpose,
it is only necessary to increase it and make it
conspicuous to the other. When I take the
view that this “expression of the ideation con-
tent” should be added to the expression of the
emotions, which are known as a physical by-
effect of psychic processes, I am well aware
that my observations which refer to the cate-
gory of the big and small do not exhaust
the subject. I myself could add still other
things, even before reaching to the phenom-
enon of tension through which a person
physically indicates the accumulation of his at-
tention and the niveau of abstraction upon
which his thoughts happen to rest. I maintain
that this subject is very important, and I be-
lieve that tracing the ideation mimicry in other

311

fields of æsthetics would be just as useful for
the understanding of the comic as it is here.
To return to the comic movement, I repeat
that with the perception of a certain motion
the impulse to conceive it will be given through
a certain expenditure. In the “desire to
understand,” in the apperception of this move-
ment I produce a certain expenditure, and I
behave in this part of the psychic process just
as if I put myself in the place of the person
observed. Simultaneously I probably grasp
the aim of the motion, and through former ex-
periences I am able to estimate the amount of
expenditure necessary to attain this aim. I
thereby drop out of consideration the person
observed and behave as if I myself wished to
attain the aim of the motion. These two idea-
tional possibilities depend on a comparison of
the motion observed with my own inhibited
motion. In the case of an immoderate or inap-
propriate movement on the part of the other,
my greater expenditure for understanding be-
comes inhibited statu nascendi during the mob-
ilization as it were, it is declared superfluous
and stands free for further use or for dis-
charge through laughing. If other favorable
conditions supervened this would be the na-
ture of the origin of pleasure in comic move-
ment,—an innervation expenditure which,

312

when compared with one's own motion, be-
comes an inapplicable surplus.

Comparison of Two Kinds of Expenditure as
Pleasure-sources

We now note that we must continue our
discussion by following two different paths;
first, to determine the conditions for the dis-
charge of the surplus; secondly, to test
whether the other cases of the comic can be
conceived similarly to our conception of comic
motion.

We shall turn first to the latter task and
after considering comic movement and action
we shall turn to the comic found in the psy-
chic activities and peculiarities of others.

As an example of this kind we may con-
sider the comical nonsense produced by ig-
norant students at examinations; it is more dif-
ficult, however, to give a simple example of
the peculiarities. We must not be confused
by the fact that nonsense and foolishness which
so often act in a comical manner are neverthe-
less not perceived as comical in all cases, just
as the same things which once made us laugh
because they seemed comical later may appear
to us contemptible and hateful. This fact,
which we must not forget to take into account,

313

seems only to show that besides the comparison
familiar to us other relations come into con-
sideration for the comic effect,—conditions
which we can investigate in other connections.
The comic found in the mental and psychic
attributes of another person is apparently
again the result of a comparison between him
and my own ego. But it is remarkable that it
is a comparison which mostly furnishes the
result opposite to that obtained through comic
movement and action. In the latter case it is
comical if the other person assumes a greater
expenditure than I believe to be necessary for
me; in the case of psychic activity it is just
the reverse, it is comical if the other person
economizes in expenditure, which I consider
indispensable; for nonsense and foolishness are
nothing but inferior activities. In the first
case I laugh because he makes it too difficult
for himself, and in the latter case because he
makes it too easy for himself. In the case of
the comic effect it seems to be a question only
of the difference between the two energy ex-
penditures—the one of “feeling one’s self into
something” (Einfühlung)—and the other of
the ego—and it makes no difference in whose
favor this difference inclines. This peculiarity,
which at first confuses our judgment, disap-
pears, however, when we consider that it is in

314

accord with our personal development towards
a higher stage of culture, to limit our muscular
work and increase our mental work. By
heightening our mental expenditure we pro-
duce a diminution of motion expenditure for
the same activity. Our machines bear witness
to this cultural success.¹

Thus it coincides with a uniform understand-
ing that that person appears comical to us who
puts forth too much expenditure in his psychical
activities and too little in his mental activities;
and it cannot be denied that in both cases our
laughing is the expression of a pleasurably
perceived superiority which we adjudge to
ourselves in comparison with him. If the re-
lation in both cases becomes reversed, that is,
if the somatic expenditure of the other is less
and the psychic expenditure greater, then we
no longer laugh, but are struck with amaze-
ment and admiration.²

Comic of Situation.

The origin of the comic pleasure discussed here,
that is, the origin of such pleasure in a com-

¹“What one has not in his head,” as the saying goes, “he
must have in his legs.”

²The problem has been greatly confused by the general condi-
tions determining the comic, whereby the comic pleasure is seen
to have its source now in a too-muchness and now in a not-
enoughness.

315

THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC

parison of the other person with one’s own self
in respect to the difference between the iden-
tification expenditure (Einfühlungsaufwand)
and normal expenditure—is genetically proba-
bly the most important. It is certain, however,
that it is not the only one. We have learned
before to disregard any such comparison be-
tween the other person and one’s self, and to
obtain the pleasure-bringing difference from
one side only, either from identification, or
from the processes in one’s own ego, proving
thereby that the feeling of superiority bears
no essential relations to comic pleasure. A
comparison is indispensable, however, for the
origin of this pleasure, and we find this com-
parison between two energy expenditures
which rapidly follow each other and refer to
the same function. It is produced either in
ourselves by way of identification with the
other, or we find it without any identification
in our own psychic processes. The first case,
in which the other person still plays a part,
though he is not compared with ourselves, re-
sults when the pleasure-producing difference
of energy expenditures comes into existence
through outer influences which we can compre-
hend as a “situation,” for which reason this
species of comic is also called the “comic of
situation.” The peculiarities of the person who

316

furnishes the comic do not here come into es-
sential consideration; we laugh when we admit
to ourselves that had we been placed in the
same situation we should have done the same
thing. Here we draw the comic from the re-
lation of the individual to the often all-too-
powerful outer world, which is represented in
the psychic processes of the individual by the
conventions and necessities of society, and even
by his bodily needs. A typical example of the
latter is when a person engaged in an activity,
which claims all his psychic forces, is suddenly
disturbed by a pain or excremental need. The
opposite case which furnishes us the comic
difference through identification, lies between
the great interest which existed before the
disturbance occurred and the minimum left
for his psychic activity after the disturb-
ance made its appearance. The person who
furnishes us this difference again becomes
comical through inferiority; but he is only in-
ferior in comparison with his former ego and
not in comparison with us, for we know that
in a similar case we could not have behaved
differently. It is remarkable, however, that
we find this inferiority of the person only in
the case where we “feel ourselves” into some
one, that is, we can only find it comical in the
other, whereas we ourselves are conscious only.

317

of painful emotions when such or similar em-
barrassments happen to us. It is by keeping
away the painful from our own person that we
are probably first enabled to enjoy as pleas-
urable the difference which resulted from the
comparison of the changing energy.

Comic of Expectation

The other source of the comic, which we find
in our own changes of investing energy, lies
in our relations to the future, which we are
accustomed to anticipate through our ideas of
expectation. I assume that a quantitatively
determined expenditure underlies our every
idea of expectation, which in case of disap-
pointment becomes diminished by a certain dif-
ference, and I again refer to the observations
made before concerning “ideational mimicry.”
But it seems to me easier to demonstrate
the real mobilized psychic expenditure for the
cases of expectation. It is well known con-
cerning a whole series of cases that the mani-
festation of expectation is formed by motor
preliminaries; this is first of all true of cases
in which the expected events make demands
on my motility, and these preparations are
quantitatively determinable without anything
further. If I am expecting to catch a ball

318

thrown at me, I put my body in states of ten-
sion in order to enable me to withstand the
collision with the ball, and the superfluous mo-
tions which I make if the ball turns out to be
light make me look comical to the spectators.
I allowed myself to be misled by the expecta-
tion to exert an immoderate expenditure of
motion. A similar thing happens if, for exam-
ple, I lift out a basket of fruit which I took
to be heavy but which was hollow and formed
out of wax in order to deceive me. By its up-
ward jerk my arm betrays the fact that I have
prepared a superfluous innervation for this
purpose and hence I am laughed at. In fact
there is at least one case in which the expecta-
tion expenditure can be directly demonstrated
by means of physiological experimentation with
animals. In Pawlof’s experiments with sali-
vary secretions of dogs who, provided with sali-
vary fistulæ, are shown different kinds of food,
it is noticed that the amount of saliva secreted
through the fistulæ depends on whether the
conditions of the experiment have strengthened
or disappointed the dogs’ expectation to be
fed with the food shown them.

Even where the thing expected lays claims
only to my sensory organs, and not to my mo-
tility, I may assume that the expectation mani-
fests itself in a certain motor emanation caus-
 

319

ing tension of the senses, and I may even con
ceive the suspension of attention as a motor
activity which is equivalent to a certain amount
of expenditure. Moreover, I can presuppose
that the preparatory activity of expectation
is not independent of the amount of the ex-
pected impression, but that I represent mim-
ically the bigness and smallness of the same
by means of a greater or smaller preparatory
expenditure, just as in the case of imparting
something and in the case of thinking when
there is no expectation. The expectation ex-
penditure naturally will be composed of many
components, and also for my disappointment
diverse factors will come into consideration; it
is not only a question whether the realized
event is perceptibly greater or smaller than the
expected one, but also whether the expectation
is worthy of the great interest which I had of-
fered for it. In this manner I am instructed
to consider, besides the expenditure for the
representation of bigness and smallness (the
conceptual mimicry), also the expenditure for
the tension of attention (expectation expendi-
ture), and in addition to these two expendi-
tures there is in all cases the abstraction ex-
penditure. But these other forms of expendi-
ture can easily be reduced to the one of big-
ness and smallness, for what we call more in-

320

teresting, more sublime, and even more ab-
stract, are only particularly qualified special
cases of what is greater. Let us add to this
that, among other things, Lipps holds that the
quantitative, not the qualitative, contrast is
primarily the source of comic pleasure, and we
shall be altogether content to have chosen the
comic element of motion as the starting-
point of our investigation.

In working out Kant’s thesis, “The comic
is an expectation dwindled into nothing,”
Lipps made the attempt in his book, often
cited here, to trace the comic pleasure alto-
gether to expectation. Despite the many in-
structive and valuable results which this at-
tempt brought to light I should like to agree
with the criticism expressed by other authors,
namely, that Lipps has formulated a field of
origin of the comic which is much too narrow,
and that he could not subject its phenomena
to his formula without much forcing.

Caricature

Human beings are not satisfied with enjoy-
ing the comic as they encounter it in life, but
they aim to produce it purposely, thus we dis-
cover more of the nature of the comic by
studying the methods employed in producing

321

the comic. Above all one can produce comical
elements in one’s personality for the amuse-
ment of others, by making one’s self appear
awkward or stupid. One then produces the
comic exactly as if one were really so, by com-
plying with the condition of comparison which
leads to the difference of expenditure; but one
does not make himself laughable or contempti-
ble through this; indeed, under certain circum-
stances one can even secure admiration. The
feeling of superiority does not come into exist-
ence in the other when he knows that the actor
is only shamming, and this furnishes us a good
new proof that the comic is independent in
principle of the feeling of superiority.

To make another comical, the method most
commonly employed is to transfer him into
situations wherein he becomes comical regard-
less of his personal qualities, as a result of hu-
man dependence upon external circumstances,
especially social factors; in other words, one
resorts to the comical situation. This trans-
ferring into a comic situation may be real as
in practical jokes, such as placing the foot in
front of one so that he falls like a clumsy per-
son, or making one appear stupid by utilizing
his credulity to make him believe some non-
sense, etc., or it can be feigned by means of
speech or play. It is a good aid in aggression,

322

in the service of which production of the
comic is wont to place itself in order that the
comic pleasure may be independent of the
reality of the comic situation; thus every per-
son is really defenseless against being made
comical.

But there are still other means of making
one comical which deserve special attention
and which in part also show new sources of
comic pleasure. Imitation, for example, be-
longs here; it accords the hearer an extraor-
dinary amount of pleasure and makes its
subject comic, even if it still keeps away from
the exaggeration of caricature. It is much
easier to fathom the comic effect of caricature
than that of simple imitation. Caricature,
parody and travesty, like their practical
counterpart—unmasking, range themselves
against persons and objects who command
authority and respect and who are exalted in
some sense—these are procedures tending to-
wards degradation.¹⁾ In the transferred psy-
chic sense, the exalted is equivalent to some-
thing great and I want to make the statement,
or more accurately to repeat the statement,
that psychic greatness like somatic greatness

¹⁾Degradation: A. Bain (The Emotions and the Will, 2nd Ed.,
1865) states: “The occasion of the ludicrous is the degradation
of some person of interest possessing dignity, in circumstances
that excite no other strong emotion” (p. 248).

323

is exhibited by means of an increased expendi
ture. It needs little observation to ascertain
that when I speak of the exalted I give a dif
ferent innervation to my voice, I change my
facial expression, an attempt to bring my en
tire bearing as it were into complete accord
with the dignity of that which I present. I
impose upon myself a dignified restriction not
much different than if I were coming into the
presence of an illustrious personage, monarch,
or prince of science. I can scarcely err when
I assume that this added innervation of con
ceptual mimicry corresponds to an increased
expenditure. The third case of such an added
expenditure I readily find when I indulge in
abstract trains of thought instead of in the
concrete and plastic ideas. If I can now
imagine that the mentioned processes for de
grading the illustrious are quite ordinary, that
during their activity I need not be on my
guard and in whose ideal presence I may, to
use a military formula, put myself “at ease,”
all that saves me the added expenditure of
dignified restriction. Moreover, the compari
son of this manner of presentation instigated
by identification with the manner of presenta
tion to which I have been hitherto accus
tomed which seeks to present itself at the
same time, again produces a difference in

324

expenditure which can be discharged through
laughter.

As is known, caricature brings about the
degradation by rendering prominent one fea-
ture, comic in itself, from the entire picture of
the exalted object, a feature which would be
overlooked if viewed with the entire picture.
Only by isolating this feature can the comic
effect be obtained which spreads in our mem-
ory over the whole picture. This has, how-
ever, this condition; the presence of the exalted
itself must not force us into a disposition of
reverence. Where such a comical feature is
really lacking then caricature unhesitatingly
creates it by exaggerating one that is not com-
ical in itself. It is again characteristic of the
origin of comic pleasure that the effect of the
caricature is not essentially impaired through
such a falsifying of reality.

Unmasking.

Parody and travesty accomplish the degra-
dation of the exalted by other means; they
destroy the uniformity between the attributes
of persons familiar to us and their speech and
actions; by replacing either the illustrious per-
sons or their utterances by lowly ones.
Therein they differ from caricature, but not

325

through the mechanism of the production of
the comic pleasure. The same mechanism also
holds true in unmasking, which comes into
consideration only where some one has attached
to himself dignity and authority which in
reality should be taken from him. We have
seen the comic effect of unmasking through
several examples of wit, for example, in the
story of the fashionable lady who in her first
labor-
pains cries: “Ah, mon Dieu!” but to
whom the physician paid no attention until she
screamed: “A-a-a-
ai-e-e-e-e-E-E-E!” Be-
ing now acquainted with the character of the
comic, we can no longer dispute that this story
is really an example of comical unmasking and
has no just claim to the term witticism. It
recalls wit only through the setting, through
the technical means of “representation through
a trifle”; here it is the cry which was found
sufficient to indicate the point. The fact re-
mains, however, that our feeling for the nice
ties of speech, when we call on it for judg-
ment, does not oppose calling such a story a
witticism. We can find the explanation for
this in the reflection that usage of speech does
not enter scientifically into the nature of wit
so far as we have evolved it by means of this
painstaking examination. As it is a function
of the activities of wit to reopen hidden

326

sources of comic pleasure (p. 150), every arti-
fice which does not bring to light barefaced
comic may in looser analogy be called a wit-
ticism. This is especially true in the case of
unmasking, though in other methods of comic-
making the appellation also holds good.¹

In the mechanism of “unmasking” one can
also utilize those processes of comic-making
already known to us which degrade the dignity
of individuals in that they call attention to one
of the common human frailties, but particu-
larly to the dependence of his mental func-
tions upon physical needs. Unmasking them
becomes equivalent to the reminder: This or
that one who is admired like a demigod is
only a human being like you and me after all.
Moreover, all efforts in this mechanism serve
to lay bare the monotonous psychic automatism
which is behind wealth and apparent freedom
of psychic achievements. We have become
acquainted with examples of such “unmask-
ing” through the witticisms dealing with mar-
riage agents, and at that time to be sure we
felt doubt whether we could rightly count
these stories as wit. Now we can decide with
more certainty that the anecdote of the echo
who reinforces all assertions of the marriage

¹“Thus every conscious and clever evocation of the comic is
called wit, be it the comic of views or situations. Naturally we
cannot use this view of wit here.” Lipps, l. c., p. 78.

327

agent and in the end reinforces the latter’s
admission that the bride has a hunch back with
the exclamation “And what a hunch!” is es-
sentially a comic story, an example of the un-
masking of the psychic automatism. But here
the comic story serves only as a façade; to
any one who wishes to note the hidden meaning
of the marriage agent, the whole remains a
splendidly put together piece of wit. He who
does not penetrate so far sees only the comic
story. The same is true of the other witticism
of the agent who, to refute an objection, fi-
nally confirms the truth through the exclama-
tion: “But who in the world would lend them
anything?” This is a comic unmasking which
serves as a façade for a witticism. Still the
character of the wit is here quite evident, as
the speech of the agent is at the same time an
expression through the opposite. In trying to
prove that the people are rich he proves at the
same time that they are not rich but very poor.
Wit and the comic unite here and teach us
that a statement may be simultaneously witty
and comical.

We eagerly grasp the opportunity to re-
turn from the comic of unmasking to wit, for
our real task is to explain the relation between
wit and comic and not to determine the na-
ture of the comic. Hence to the case of un-

328

covering the psychic automatism, wherein our
feeling left us in doubt as to whether the mat-
ter was comical or witty, we add another, the
case of nonsense-wit, wherein likewise wit and
the comic fuse. But our investigation will
ultimately show us that in this second case the
meeting of wit and comic may be theoretically
deduced.

In the discussion of the techniques of wit
we have found that giving free play to such
modes of thinking as are common in the un-
conscious and which in consciousness are con-
ceived only as “faulty thinking,” furnishes the
technical means of a great many witticisms.
We had then doubted their witty character
and were inclined to classify them simply as
comic stories. We could come to no decision
regarding our uncertainty because in the first
place the real character of wit was not familiar
to us. Later we found this character by fol-
lowing the analogy to the dream-work as to
the compromise formed by the wit-work be-
tween the demands of the rational critic and
the impulse not to abandon the old word-pleas-
ure and nonsense-pleasure. What thus came
into existence as a compromise, when the fore-
conscious thought was left for a moment to
unconscious elaboration, satisfied both demands
in all cases, but it presented itself to the critic,

329

THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC

in various forms and had to stand various crit-
icisms from it. In one case wit succeeded in
surreptitiously assuming the form of an unim-
portant but none the less admissible proposi-
tion; a second time it smuggled itself into the
expression of a valuable thought. But within
the outer limit of the compromise activity it
made no effort to satisfy the critic, and defi-
antly utilizing the pleasure-sources at its dis-
posal, it appeared before the critic as pure
nonsense. It had no fear of provoking con-
tradiction because it could rely on the fact that
the hearer would decipher the disfigurement of
the expression through the operation of his un-
conscious and thus give back to it its meaning.
Now in what case will wit appear to the
critic as nonsense? Particularly when it makes
use of those modes of thought, which are com-
mon in the unconscious, but forbidden in con-
scious thought; that is, when it resorts to
faulty thinking. Some of the modes of think-
ing, of the unconscious, have also been re-
tained in conscious thinking, for example,
many forms of indirect expression, allu-
sions, etc., even though their conscious use
has to be much restricted. Using these
techniques wit will arouse little or no op-
position on the part of the critic; but this only
happens when it also uses that technical means

330

with which conscious thought no longer cares
to have anything to do. Wit can still further
avoid offending if it disguises the faulty think-
ing by investing it with a semblance of logic
as in the story of the fancy cake and liqueur,
salmon with mayonnaise, and similar ones.
But should it present the faulty thinking un-
disguised, the critic is sure to protest.

The Meeting of Wit and the Comic

In this case, something else comes to the aid
of wit. The faulty thinking, which as a form
of thinking of the unconscious, wit utili-
zes its technique, appears comical to the critic,
although this is not necessarily the case. The
conscious giving of free play to the unconscious
and to those forms of thinking which are re-
jected as faulty, furnishes a means for the pro-
duction of comic pleasure. This can be easily
understood, as a greater expenditure is surely
needed for the production of the forecon-
scious investing energy than for the giving of free
play to the unconscious. When we hear the
thought which is formed like one from the un-
conscious we compare it to its correct form,
and this results in a difference of expenditure
which gives origin to comic pleasure. A wit-
ticism which makes use of such faulty thinking
as its technique and therefore appears absurd

331

can produce a comic impression at the same
time. If we do not strike the trail of the wit,
there remains to us only the comic or funny
story.

The story of the borrowed kettle, which
showed a hole on being returned, whereupon
the borrower excused himself by stating that
in the first place he had not borrowed the ket-
tle; secondly, that it already had a hole when
he borrowed it; and thirdly, that he had re-
turned it intact without any hole (p. 82), is an
excellent example of a purely comic effect
through giving free play to one’s unconscious
modes of thinking. Just this mutual neutrali-
zation of several thoughts, each of which is well
motivated in itself, is the province of the un-
conscious. Corresponding to this, the dream in
which the unconscious thoughts become mani-
fest, also shows an absence of either—or.¹
These are expressed by putting the thoughts
next to one another. In that dream example
given in my Interpretation of Dreams,² which
in spite of its complication I have chosen as
a type of the work of interpretation, I seek
to rid myself of the reproach that I have not
removed the pains of a patient by psychic
treatment. My arguments are: 1. she is her-
 

¹ At the most this is inserted by the dreamer as an explanation.

² l. c., p. 294.

332

self to blame for her illness, because she does
not wish to accept my solution, 2. her pains
are of organic origin, therefore none of my
concern, 3. her pains are connected with her
widowhood, for which I am certainly not to
blame, 4. her pains resulted from an injection
with a dirty syringe, which was given by
another. All these motives follow one another
just as though one did not exclude the
other. In order to escape the reproach that
it was nonsense I had to insert the words
“either–or” instead of the “and” of the
dream.

A similar comical story is the one which tells
of a blacksmith in a Hungarian village who has
committed a crime punishable by death; the
bürgomaster, however, decreed that not the
smith but a tailor was to be hanged, as there
were two tailors in the village but only one
blacksmith, and the crime had to be expiated.
Such a displacement of guilt from one person
to another naturally contradicts all laws of
conscious logic, but in no ways the mental
trends of the unconscious. I am in doubt
whether to call this story comic, and still I put
the story of the kettle among the witticisms.
Now I admit that it is far more correct to des-
ignate the latter as comic rather than witty.
But now I understand how it happens that my

333

feelings, usually so reliable, can leave me in
the lurch as to whether this story be comic
or witty. The case in which I cannot come
to a conclusion through my feelings is the one
in which the comic results through the uncov-
ering of modes of thought which exclusively
belong to the unconscious. A story of that
kind can be comic and witty at the same time;
but it will impress me as being witty even if
it be only comic, because the use of the faulty
thinking of the unconscious reminds me of
wit, just as in the case of the arrangements
for the uncovering of the hidden comic dis-
cussed before (p. 325).

I must lay great stress upon making clear
this most delicate point of my analysis, namely,
the relation of wit to the comic, and will there-
fore supplement what has been said with some
negative statements. First of all, I call at-
tention to the fact that the case of the meeting
of wit and comic treated here (p. 327) is not
identical with the preceding one. I grant it
is a fine distinction, but it can be drawn with
certainty. In the preceding case the comic
originated from the uncovering of the psychic
automatism. This is in no way peculiar to the
unconscious alone and it does not at all play a
conspicuous part in the technique of wit. Un-
masking appears only accidentally in relation

334

with wit, in that it serves another technique of
wit, namely, representation through the oppo-
site. But in the case of giving free play to
unconscious ways of thinking the union of wit
and comic is an essential one, because the
same method which is used by the first person
in wit as the technique of releasing pleasure
will naturally produce comic pleasure in the
third person.

We might be tempted to generalize this last
case and seek the relation of wit to the comic
in the fact that the effect of wit upon the third
person follows the mechanism of comic pleas-
ure. But there is no question about that; con-
tact with the comic is not in any way found
in all nor even in most witticisms; in most
cases wit and the comic can be cleanly sep-
arated. As often as wit succeeds in escaping
the appearance of absurdity, which is to say
in most witticisms of double meaning or of al-
lusion, one cannot discover any effect in the
hearer resembling the comic. One can make
the test with examples previously cited or with
some new ones given here.

Congratulatory telegram to be sent to a
gambler on his 70th birthday.
“ Trente et quarante ”¹⁾ (word-
division with
allusion).

¹⁾ “ Trente et quarante ” is a gambling game.

335

Madame de Maintenon was called Madame
de Maintenant (modification of a name).

We might further believe that at least all
jokes with nonsense façades appear comical
and must impress us as such. But I recall
here the fact that such witticisms often have
a different effect on the hearer, calling forth
confusion and a tendency to rejection (see foot-
note, p. 212). Therefore it evidently depends
whether the nonsense of the wit appears comical
or common plain nonsense, and the conditions
for this we have not yet investigated. Accord-
ingly we hold to the conclusion that wit, judg-
ing by its nature, can be separated from the
comic, and that it unites with it on the one
hand only in certain special cases, on the other
in the tendency to gain pleasure from intel-
lectual sources.

In the course of these examinations con-
cerning the relations of wit and the comic there
revealed itself to us that distinction which we
must emphasize as most significant, and which
at the same time points to a psychologically
important characteristic of the comic. We had
to transfer to the unconscious the source of
wit-
pleasure; there is no occasion which can be
discovered for the same localization of the
comic. On the contrary all analyses which we
have made thus far indicate that the source

336

of comic pleasure lies in the comparison of
two expenditures, both of which we must
adjudged to the foreconscious. Wit and the
comic can above all be differentiated in the
psychic localization; wit is, so to speak, the
contribution to the comic from the sphere of
the unconscious.

Comic of Imitation

We need not blame ourselves for digressing
from the subject, for the relation of wit to the
comic is really the occasion which urged us to
the examination of the comic. But it is time
for us to return to the point under discussion,
to the treatment of the means which serve to
produce the comic. We have advanced the
discussion of caricature and unmasking, be-
cause from both of them we can borrow several
points of similarity for the analysis of the
comic of imitation. Imitation is mostly re-
placed by caricature, which consists in the ex-
aggeration of certain otherwise not striking
traits, and also bears the character of degrada-
tion. Still this does not seem to exhaust the
nature of imitation; it is incontestable that in
itself it represents an extraordinarily rich
source of comic pleasure, for we laugh partic-
ularly over faithful imitations. It is not easy

337

to give a satisfactory explanation of this if we
do not accept Bergson’s view,¹⁾ according to
which the comic of imitation is put next to the
comic produced by uncovering the psychic
automatism. Bergson believes that everything
gives a comic impression which manifests itself
in the shape of a machine-
like inanimate move-
ment in the human being. His law is that
“the attitudes, gestures, and movements of
the human body are laughable in exact pro-
portion as that body reminds us of a mere
machine.” He explains the comic of imitation
by connecting it with a problem formulated
by Pascal in his Thoughts, why is it that we
laugh at the comparison of two faces that are
alike although neither of them excites laughter
by itself. “The truth is that a really living
life should never repeat itself. Wherever
there is repetition or complete similarity, we
always suspect some mechanism at work behind
the living.” Analyze the impression you get
from two faces that are too much alike, and
you will find that you are thinking of two
copies cast in the same mould, or two impres-
sions of the same soul, or two reproductions of
the same negative,—in a word, of some manu-
facturing process or other. This deflection of
life towards the mechanical is here the real

¹⁾Bergson, l. c., p. 29.

338

cause of laughter (l. c., p. 34). We might say, it
is the degradation of the human to the me-
chanical or inanimate. If we accept these
winning arguments of Bergson, it is moreover
not difficult to subject his view to our own
formula. Taught by experience that every
living being is different and demands a definite
amount of expenditure from our understand-
ing, we find ourselves disappointed when, as
a result of a perfect agreement or deceptive
imitation, we need no new expenditure. But
we are disappointed in the sense of being re-
lieved, and the expenditure of expectation
which has become superfluous is discharged
through laughter. The same formula will also
cover all cases of comic rigidity considered by
Bergson, such as professional habits, fixed
ideas, and modes of expression which are re-
peated on every occasion. All these cases aim
to compare the expenditure of expectation
with what is commonly required for the under-
standing, whereby the greater expectation de-
pends on observation of individual variety and
human plasticity. Hence in imitation the
source of comic pleasure is not the comic of
situation but that of expectation.

As we trace the comic pleasure in general
to comparison, it is incumbent upon us to in-
vestigate also the comic element of the com-
 

339

parison itself, which likewise serves as a means
of producing the comic. Our interest in this
question will be enhanced when we recall that
in the case of comparison the “feeling” as
to whether something was to be classed as
witty or merely comical often left us in the
lurch (v. p. 114).

The subject really deserves more attention
than we can bestow upon it. The main qual-
ity for which we ask in comparison is whether
it is pertinent, that is, whether it really calls
our attention to an existing agreement between
two different objects. The original pleasure
in refinding the same thing (Groos, p. 103)
is not the only motive which favors the use
of comparison. Besides this there is the fact
that comparison is capable of a utilization
which facilitates intellectual work; when for
example, as is usually the case, one compares
the less familiar to the more familiar, the ab-
stract to the concrete, and explains through
this comparison the more strange and the more
difficult objects. With every such compari-
son, especially of the abstract to the concrete,
there is a certain degradation and a certain
economy in abstraction expenditure (in the
sense of a conceptual mimicry) yet this nat-
urally does not suffice to render prominent
the character of the comic. The latter does not

340

THEORETICAL PART

emerge suddenly from the freed pleasure of
the comparison but comes gradually; there
are many cases which only touch the comic, in
which one might doubt whether they show the
comic character. The comparison undoubtedly
becomes comical when the niveau difference
of the expenditure of abstraction between the
two things compared becomes increased, if
something serious and strange, especially of
intellectual or moral nature is compared to
something banal and lowly. The former re-
lease of pleasure and the contribution from
the conditions of conceptual mimicry may per-
haps explain the gradual change—which is de-
termined by quantitative relations,—from the
universally pleasurable to the comic, which
takes place during the comparison. I am
certainly avoiding misunderstandings in that
I emphasize that I deduce the comic pleasure
in the comparison, not from the contrast of
the two things compared but from the differ-
ence of the two abstraction expenditures.
The strange which is difficult to grasp, the ab-
stract and really intellectually sublime, through
its alleged agreement with a familiar lowly
one, in the imagination of which every abstrac-
tion expenditure disappears, is now itself un-
masked as something equally lowly. The

341

comic of comparison thus becomes reduced to
a case of degradation.

The comparison, as we have seen above, can
now be witty without a trace of comic admix-
ture, especially when it happens to evade the
degradation. Thus the comparison of Truth
to a torch which one cannot carry through a
crowd without singeing somebody’s beard is
pure wit, because it takes an obsolete expres-
sion (“The torch of truth”) at its full value
and not at all in a comical sense, and because
the torch as an object does not lack a certain
distinction, though it is a concrete object.
However, a comparison may just as well be
witty as comic, and what is more one may be
independent of the other, in that the compari-
son becomes an aid for certain techniques of
wit, as, for example, unification or allusion.
Thus Nestroy’s comparison of memory to a
“Warehouse” (p. 120) is simultaneously comi-
cal and witty, first, on account of the extra-
ordinary degradation to which the psychologi-
cal conception must consent in the comparison
to a “Warehouse,” and secondly, because he
who utilizes the comparison is a clerk, and in
this comparison he establishes a rather unex-
pected unification between psychology and his
vocation. Heine’s verse, “until at last the
buttons tore from the pants of my patience,”

342

seems at first an excellent example of a comic
degrading comparison, but on closer reflection
we must ascribe to it also the attribute of wit-
tiness, since the comparison as a means of al-
lusion strikes into the realm of the obscene and
causes a release of pleasure from the obscene.
Through a union not altogether incidental the
same material also gives us a resultant pleas-
ure which is at the same time comical and
witty; it does not matter whether or not the
conditions of the one promote the origin of the
other, such a union acts confusingly on the
“feeling” whose function it is to announce to
us whether we have before us wit or the comic,
and only a careful examination independent
of the disposition of pleasure can decide the
question.

As tempting as it would be to trace these
more intimate determinations of comic pleas-
ure, the author must remember that neither
his previous education nor his daily vocation
justifies him in extending his investigations be-
yond the spheres of wit, and he must confess
that it is precisely the subject of comic com-
parison which makes him feel his incompetence.

We are quite willing to be reminded that
many authors do not recognize the clear no-
tional and objective distinction between wit
and comic, as we were impelled to do, and that

343

they classify wit merely as “the comic of
speech” or “of words.” To test this view let
us select one example of intentional and one
of involuntary comic of speech and compare
it with wit. We have already mentioned be-
fore that we are in a good position to dis-
tinguish comic from witty speech. “With a
fork and with effort, his mother pulled him
out of the mess,” is only comical, but Heine’s
verse about the four castes of the population
of Göttingen: “Professors, students, Philis-
tines, and cattle,” is exquisitely witty.

As an example of the intentional comic of
speech I will take as a model Stettenheim’s
Wippchen. We call Stettenheim witty be-
cause he possesses the cleverness that evokes
the comic. The wit which one “has” in con-
tradistinction to the wit which one “makes,”
is indeed correctly conditioned by this ability.
It is true that the letters of Wippchen are
also witty in so far as they are interspersed
with a rich collection of all sorts of witticisms,
some of which very successful ones, (as “fes-
tively undressed” when he speaks of a parade
of savages), but what lends the peculiar char-
acter to these productions is not these iso-
lated witticisms, but the superabundant flow
of comic speech contained therein. Originally
Wippchen was certainly meant to represent

344

a satirical character, a modification of Frey-
tag’s Schmock, one of those uneducated per-
sons who trade in the educational treasure of
the nation and abuse it; but the pleasure in
the comic effect experienced in representing
this person seems gradually to have pushed to
the background the author’s satirical tendency.
Wippchen’s productions are for the most part
“comic nonsense.” The author has justly
utilized the pleasant mood resulting from the
accumulation of such achievements to present
beside the altogether admissible material all
sorts of absurdities which would be intolerable
in themselves. Wippchen’s nonsense appears
to be of a specific nature only on account of
its special technique. If we look closer into
some of these “witticisms,” we find that some
forms which have impressed their character on
the whole production are especially conspicu-
ous. Wippchen makes use mostly of composi-
tions (fusions), of modifications of familiar
expressions and quotations. He replaces some
of the banal elements in these expressions by
others which are usually more pretentious and
more valuable. This naturally comes near to
the techniques of wit.

345

THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC

The Comic of Speech

Some of the fusions taken from the preface
and the first pages are the following: “Tur-
key’s money is like the hay of the sea.” This
is only a condensation of the two expressions,
“Money like hay,” “Money like the sands of
the sea.” Or: “I am nothing but a leafless pil-
lar which tells of a vanished splendor,” which
is a fusion of “leafless trunk” and “a pillar
which, etc.” Or: “Where is Ariadne’s thread
which leads out of the Scylla of this Augean
stable?” for which three different Greek myths
contribute an element each.

The modifications and substitutions can be
treated collectively without much forcing; their
character can be seen from the following exam-
ples which are peculiar to Wippchen, they are
regularly permeated by a different wording
which is more fluent, most banal, and reduced
to mere platitudes.

“To hang my paper and ink high.” The
saying: “To hang one’s bread-basket high,”
expresses metaphorically the idea of placing
one under difficult conditions. But why not
stretch this figure to other material?

“Already in my youth Pegasus was alive in
me.” When the word “pegasus” is replaced
by “the poet,” one can recognize it as an ex-

346

pression often used in autobiographies. Nat-
urally “pegasus” is not the proper word to
replace the words “the poet,” but it has
thought associations to it and is a high-sound-
ing word.

From Wippchen’s other numerous produc-
tions some examples can be shown which pre-
sent the pure comic. As an example of comic
disillusionment the following can be cited:

“For hours the battle raged, finally it re-
mained undecisive”; an example of comical
unmasking (of ignorance) is the following:
“Clio, the Medusa of history,” or quotations
like the following: “Habent sua fata mor-
gana.” But our interest is aroused more by
the fusions and modifications because they re-
call familiar techniques of wit. We may com-
pare them to such modification witticisms as
the following: “He has a great future behind
him,” and Lichtenberg’s modification witticisms
such as: “New baths heal well,” etc. Should
Wippchen’s productions having the same tech-
nique be called witticisms, or what distinguishes
them from the latter?

It is surely not difficult to answer this.
Let us remember that wit presents to the
hearer a double face, and forces him to two
different views. In nonsense-witticisms such
as those mentioned last, one view, which con-
 

347

siders only the wording, states that they are
nonsense; the other view, which, in obedience
to suggestion, follows the road that leads
through the hearer’s unconscious, finds very
good sense in these witticisms. In Wippchen’s
wit-like productions one of these views of wit
is empty, as if stunted. It is a Janus head
with only one countenance developed. One
would get nowhere should he be tempted to
proceed by means of this technique to the un-
conscious. The condensations lead to no case
in which the two fused elements really result
in a new sense; they fall to pieces when an
attempt is made to analyze them. As in wit,
the modifications and substitutions lead to a
current and familiar wording, but they them-
selves tell us little else and as a rule nothing
that is of any possible use. Hence the only
thing remaining to these “witticisms” is the
nonsense view. Whether such productions,
which have freed themselves from one of the
most essential characters of wit, should be
called “bad” wit or not wit at all, every one
must decide as he feels inclined.

There is no doubt that such stunted wit pro-
duces a comic effect for which we can account
in more than one way. Either the comic
originates through the uncovering of the un-
conscious modes of thinking in a manner sim-

348

ilar to the cases considered above, or the wit
originates by comparison with perfect wit.
Nothing prevents us from assuming that we
here deal with a union of both modes of origin
of the comic pleasure. It is not to be denied
that it is precisely the inadequate dependence
on wit which here shapes the nonsense into
comic nonsense.

Comic of Inadequacy

There are, of course, other quite apparent
cases, in which such inadequacy produced by
the comparison with wit, makes the nonsense
irresistibly comic. The counterpart to wit, the
riddle, can perhaps give us better examples
for this than wit itself. A facetious question
states: What is this: It hangs on the wall and
one can dry his hands on it? It would be a
foolish riddle if the answer were: a towel. On
the contrary this answer is rejected with the
statement: No, it is a herring,—“But, for
mercy’s sake,” is the objection, “a herring
does not hang on the wall.”—“But you can
hang it there,”—“But who wants to dry his
hands on a herring?”—“Well,” is the soft
answer, “you don’t have to.” This explana-
tion given through two typical displacements
show how much this question lacks of being a

349

real riddle, and because of this absolute insuf-
ficiency it impresses one as irresistibly comic,
rather than mere nonsensical foolishness.
Through such means, that is, by not restricting
essential conditions, wit, riddles, and other
forms, which in themselves produce no comic
pleasure, can be made into sources of comic
pleasure.

It is not so difficult to understand the case
of the involuntary comic of speech which we
can perhaps find realized with as much fre-
quency as we like in the poems of Frederika
Kempner.¹⁾

ANTI-VIVISECTION.

Fraternal sentiment should urge us
To champion the Guinea-pig,
For has it not a soul like ours,
Although most likely not as big?

Or a conversation between a loving couple.

THE CONTRAST.

The young wife whispers “I’m so happy,”
“And I!” chimes in her husband’s voice,
“Because your virtues, dearest help-mate,
Reveal the wisdom of my choice.”

¹⁾Sixth Ed., Berlin, 1891.

350

There is nothing here which makes one think
of wit. Doubtless, however, it is the inadequacy
of these “poetic productions,” as the very ex-
traordinary clumsiness of the expressions which
recall the most commonplace or newspaper
style, the ingenious poverty of thoughts, the
absence of every trace of poetic manner of
thinking or speaking,—it is all these inad-
equacies which make these poems comic. Nev-
ertheless it is not at all self-evident that we
should find Kempner’s poems comical; many
similar productions we merely consider very
bad, we do not laugh at them but are rather
vexed with them. But here it is the great dis-
parity in our demand of a poem which impels
us to the comic conception; where this differ-
ence is less, we are inclined to criticise rather
than laugh. The comic effect of Kempner’s
poetic productions is furthermore assured by
the additional circumstances of the lady au-
thor’s unmistakably good intentions, and by
the fact that her helpless phrases disarm our
feeling of mockery and anger. We are now
reminded of a problem the consideration of
which we have so far postponed. The differ-
ence of expenditure is surely the main condi-
tion of the comic pleasure, but observation
teaches that such difference does not always
produce pleasure. What other conditions must

351

be added, or what disturbances must be
checked in order that pleasure should result
from the difference of expenditure? But be-
fore proceeding with the answers to these
questions we wish to verify what was said in
the conclusions of the former discussion,
namely, that the comic of speech is not synony-
mous with wit, and that wit must be some-
thing quite different from speech comic.

As we are about to attack the problem just
formulated, concerning the conditions of the
origin of comic pleasure from the difference of
expenditure, we may permit ourselves to facili-
tate this task so as to cause ourselves some
pleasure. To give a correct answer to this
question would amount to an exhaustive
presentation of the nature of the comic for
which we are fitted neither by ability nor author-
ity. We shall therefore again be content to
elucidate the problem of the comic only
so far as it distinctly separates itself from
wit.

All theories of the comic were objected to
by the critics on the ground that in defining
the comic these theories overlooked the essen-
tial element of it. This can be seen from the
following theories, with their objections. The
comic depends on a contrasting idea; yes, in
so far as this contrast effects one comically and

352

in no other way. The feeling of the comic re-
sults from the dwindling away of an expecta-
tion; yes, if the disappointment does not prove
to be painful. There is no doubt that these
objections are justified, but they are overesti-
mated if one concludes from them that the es-
sential characteristic mark of the comic has
hitherto escaped our conception. What depre-
ciates the general validity of these definitions
are conditions which are indispensable for the
origin of the comic pleasure, but which will be
searched in vain for the nature of comic pleas-
ure. The rejection of the objections and the
explanations of the contradictions to the defini-
tions of the comic will become easy for us,
only after we trace back comic pleasure to the
difference resulting from a comparison of two
expenditures. Comic pleasure and the effect
by which it is recognized—laughter, can origi-
nate only when this difference is no longer
utilizable and when it is capable of discharge.
We gain no pleasurable effect, or at most a
flighty feeling of pleasure in which the comic
does not appear, if the difference is put to
other use as soon as it is recognized. Just
as special precautions must be taken in wit,
in order to guard against making new use of
expenditure recognized as superfluous, so also
can comic pleasure originate only under rela-
 

353

tions which fulfil this latter condition. The
cases in which such differences of expenditure
originate in our ideational life are therefore
uncommonly numerous, while the cases in
which the comic originates from them is com-
paratively very rare.

The Conditions of Isolation of the Comic

Two observations obtrude themselves upon
the observer who reviews even only superficially
the origin of comic pleasure from the difference
of expenditure; first, that there are cases in
which the comic appears regularly and as if
necessarily; and, in contrast to these cases,
others in which this appearance depends on the
conditions of the case and on the viewpoint of
the observer; but secondly, that unusually
large differences very often triumph over un-
favorable conditions, so that the comic feeling
originates in spite of it. In reference to the
first point one may set up two classes, the in-
evitable comic and the accidental comic, al-
though one will have to be prepared from the
beginning to find exceptions in the first class
to the inevitableness of the comic. It would
be tempting to follow the conditions which are
essential to each class.

What is important in the second class are

354

the conditions of which one may be designated
as the “isolation” of the comic case. A closer
analysis renders conspicuous relations some-
thing like the following:
a) The favorable condition for the origin
of comic pleasure is brought about by a gen-
eral happy disposition in which “one is in the
mood for laughing.” In happy toxic states al-
most everything seems comic, which probably
results from a comparison with the expendi-
ture in normal conditions. For wit, the comic,
and all similar methods of gaining pleasure
from the psychic activities, are nothing but
ways to regain this happy state—euphoria—
from one single point, when it does not exist
as a general disposition of the psyche.

b) A similar favorable condition is pro-
duced by the expectation of the comic or by
putting one’s self in the right mood for comic
pleasure. Hence when the intention to make
things comical exists and when this feeling is
shared by others, the differences required are
so slight that they probably would have been
overlooked had they been experienced in un-
premeditated occurrences. He who decides to
attend a comic lecture or a farce at the theater
is indebted to this intention for laughing over
things which in his everyday life would hardly
produce in him a comic effect. He finally

355

laughs at the recollection of having laughed, at the appear-
ance of the one who is to present the comic, 
even before the latter makes the attempt to
make him laugh. It is for this reason that
people admit that they are ashamed of that
which made them laugh at the theater.

c) Unfavorable conditions for the comic re-
sult from the kind of psychic activity which
may occupy the individual at the moment.
Imaginative or mental activity tending towards
serious aims disturbs the discharging capacity
of the investing energies which the activity
needs for its own displacements, so that only
unexpected and great differences of expendi-
ture can break through to form comic pleas-
ure. All manner of mental processes far
enough removed from the obvious to cause a
suspension of ideational mimicry are unfavora-
ble to the comic; in abstract contemplation
there is hardly any room left for the comic,
except when this form of thinking is suddenly
interrupted.

d) The occasion for releasing comic pleas-
ure vanishes when the attention is fixed on the
comparison capable of giving rise to the comic.
Under such circumstances the comic force is
lost from that which is otherwise sure to pro-
duce a comic effect. A movement or a mental

356

activity cannot become comical to him whose
interest is fixed at the time of comparing this
movement with a standard which distinctly
presents itself to him. Thus the examiner does
not see the comical in the nonsense produced
by the student in his ignorance; he is simply
annoyed by it, whereas the offender’s class-
mates who are more interested in his chances
of passing the examination than in what he
knows, laugh heartily over the same nonsense.
The teacher of dancing or gymnastics seldom
has any eyes for the comic movements of his
pupils, and the preacher entirely loses sight of
humanity’s defects of character, which the
writer of comedy brings out with so much ef-
fect. The comic process cannot stand examina-
tion by the attention, it must be able to pro-
ceed absolutely unnoticed in a manner similar
to wit. But for good reasons, it would con-
tradict the nomenclature of “conscious proc-
esses” which I have used in The Interpreta-
tion of Dreams, if one wished to call it of
necessity unconscious. It rather belongs to
the foreconscious, and one may use the fitting
name “automatic” for all those processes
which are enacted in the foreconscious and
dispense with the attention energy which is
connected with consciousness. The process
of comparison of the expenditures must re-
 

357

main automatic if it is to produce comic
pleasure.

Conditions Disturbing the Discharge

e) It is exceedingly disturbing to the comic
if the case from which it originates gives rise
at the same time to a marked release of af-
fect. The discharge of the affective difference
is then as a rule excluded. Affects, disposition,
and the attitude of the individual in occasional
cases make it clear that the comic comes or
goes with the viewpoint of the individual per-
son; that only in exceptional cases is there an
absolute comic. The dependence or relativity
of the comic is therefore much greater than
of wit, which never happens but is regularly
made, and at its production one may already
give attention to the conditions under which
it finds acceptance. But affective development
is the most intensive of the conditions which
disturb the comic, the significance of which is
well known.¹ It is therefore said that the
comic feeling comes most in tolerably indiffer-
ent cases which evince no strong feelings or
interests. Nevertheless it is just in cases with
affective release that one may witness the pro-
duction of a particularly strong expenditure-

¹“You may well laugh, that no longer concerns you.”

358

difference in the automatism of discharge.
When Colonel Butler answers Octavio’s ad-
monitions with “bitter laughter,” exclaiming:

“Thanks from the house of Austria!”

his bitterness has thus not prevented the laugh-
ter which results from the recollection of the
disappointment which he believes he has exper-
ienced; and on the other hand, the magnitude
of this disappointment could not have been
more impressively depicted by the poet than
by showing it capable of affecting laughter in
the midst of the storm of unchained affects.
It is my belief that this explanation may be
applicable in all cases in which laughing occurs
on other than pleasurable occasions, and in
conjunction with exceedingly painful or tense
affects.

f) If we also mention that the development
of the comic pleasure can be promoted by
means of any other pleasurable addition to the
case which acts like a sort of contact-effect
(after the manner of the fore-pleasure princi-
ple in the tendency-wit), then we have dis-
cussed surely not all the conditions of comic
pleasure, yet enough of them to serve our pur-
pose. We then see that no other assumption
so easily covers these conditions, as well as the
inconstancy and dependence of the comic ef-
 

359

fect, as this: the assumption that comic pleas
ure is derived from the discharge of a differ
ence, which under many conditions can be di
verted to a different use than discharge.

It still remains to give a thorough considera-
tion of the comic of the sexual and obscene,
but we shall only skim over it with a few ob
servations. Here, too, we shall take the act
of exposing one’s body as the starting-point.
An accidental exposure produces a comical
effect on us, because we compare the ease with
which we attained the enjoyment of this view
with the great expenditure otherwise necessary
for the attainment of this object. The case
thus comes nearer to the naïve-comic, but it is
simpler than the latter. In every case of ex
hibitionism in which we are made spectators–
or, in the case of the smutty joke hearers,–
we play the part of the third person, and the
person exposed is made comical. We have
heard that it is the purpose of wit to replace
obscenity and in this manner to reopen a
source of comic pleasure that has been lost.
On the contrary, spying out an exposure forms
no example of the comic for the one spying,
because the effort he exerts thereby abrogates
the condition of comic pleasure; the only thing
remaining is the sexual pleasure in what is

360

seen. If the spy relates to another what he
has seen, the person looked at again becomes
comical, because the viewpoint that predom-
inates is that the expenditure was omitted
which would have been necessary for the con-
cealment of the private parts. At all events,
the sphere of the sexual or obscene offers the
richest opportunities for gaining comic pleas-
ure beside the pleasurable sexual stimulation,
as it exposes the person’s dependence on his
physical needs (degradation) or it can uncover
behind the spiritual love the physical demands
of the same (unmasking).

The Psychogenesis of the Comic

An invitation to seek the understanding of
the comic in its psychogenesis comes sur-
prisingly from Bergson’s well written and
stimulating book Laughter. Bergson, whose
formula for the conception of the comic char-
acter has already become known to us—
“mechanization of life,” “the substitution of
something mechanical for the natural”—
reaches by obvious associations from autom-
atism to the automaton, and seeks to trace
a series of comic effects to the blurred memories
of children’s toys. In this connection he once
reaches this viewpoint, which, to be sure, he soon

361

drops; he seeks to trace the comic to the after
effect of childish pleasure. “Perhaps we
ought even to carry simplification still farther,
and, going back to our earliest recollection,
try to discover in the games that amused us
as children the first faint traces of the com-
binations that make us laugh as grown-up
persons.” . . . “Above all, we are too apt
to ignore the childish element, so to speak,
latent in most of our joyful emotions” (p. 67).
As we have now traced wit to that childish
playing with words and thoughts which is
prohibited by the rational critic, we must be
tempted to trace also these infantile roots of
the comic, conjectured by Bergson.

As a matter of fact we meet a whole series
of conditions which seem most promising, when
we examine the relation of the comic to the
child. The child itself does not by any means
seem comic to us, although its character fulfills
all conditions which, in comparison to our own,
would result in a comic difference. Thus we
see the immoderate expenditure of motion as
well as the slight psychic expenditure, the con-
trol of the psychic activities through bodily
functions, and other features. The child gives
us a comic impression only when it does not
behave as a child but as an earnest grown-up,
and even then it affects us only in the same

362

manner as other persons in disguise; but as
long as it retains the nature of the child our
perception of it furnishes us a pure pleasure,
which perhaps recalls the comic. We call it
naïve in so far as it displays to us the absence
of inhibitions, and we call naïve-comic those of
its utterances which in another we would have
considered obscene or witty.

On the other hand the child lacks all feel-
ing for the comic. This sentence seems to say
no more than that this comic feeling, like many
others, first makes its appearance in the course
of psychic development; and that would by no
means be remarkable, especially since we must
admit that it shows itself distinctly even dur-
ing years which must be accredited to child-
hood. Nevertheless it can be demonstrated
that the assertion that the child lacks feeling
for the comic has a deeper meaning than one
would suppose. In the first place it will read-
ily be seen that it cannot be different, if our
conception is correct, that the comic feeling re-
sults from a difference of expenditure pro-
duced in the effort to understand the other.
Let us again take comic motion as an example.
The comparison which furnishes the difference
reads as follows, when put in conscious formu-
læ: “So he does it,” and: “So I would do
it,” or “So I have done it.” But the child

363

lacks the standard contained in the second
sentence, it understands simply through imita-
tion; it just does it. Education of the child
furnishes it with the standard: “So you shall
do it,” and if it now makes use of the same
in comparisons, the nearest conclusion is: “He
has not done it right, and I can do it better.”
In this case it laughs at the other, it laughs
at him with a feeling of superiority. There
is nothing to prevent us from tracing this
laughter also to a difference of expenditure;
but according to the analogy with the exam-
ples of laughter occurring in us we may con-
clude that the comic feeling is not experienced
by the child when it laughs as an expression
of superiority. It is a laughter of pure pleas-
ure. In our own case whenever the judgment
of our own superiority occurs we smile rather
than laugh, or if we laugh, we are still able
to distinguish clearly this conscious realization
of our superiority from the comic which makes
us laugh.

It is probably correct to say that in many
cases which we perceive as “comical” and
which we cannot explain, the child laughs out
of pure pleasure, whereas the child’s motives
are clear and assignable. If, for instance,
some one slips on the street and falls, we laugh
because this impression—we know not why—

364

is comical. The child laughs in the same case
out of a feeling of superiority or out of joy
over the calamity of others. It amounts to
saying: “You fell, but I did not.” Certain
pleasure motives of the child seems to be lost
for us grown-ups, but as a substitute for these
we perceive under the same conditions the
“comic” feeling.

The Infantile and the Comic

If we were permitted to generalize, it would
seem very tempting to transfer the desired
specific character of the comic into the awak-
ening of the infantile, and to conceive the
comic as a regaining of “lost infantile laugh-
ing.” One could then say, “I laugh every time
over a difference of expenditure between the
other and myself, when I discover in the other
the child.” Or expressed more precisely, the
whole comparison leading to the comic would
read as follows:

“He does it this way—I do it differently—
He does it just as I did when I was a child.”

This laughter would thus result every time
from the comparison between the ego of the
grown-up and the ego of the child. The uncer-
tainty itself of the comic difference, causing

365

now the lesser and now the greater expendi-
ture to appear comical to me, would corre-
spond to the infantile determination; the comic
therein is actually always on the side of the in-
fantile.

This is not contradicted by the fact that the
child itself as an object of comparison does not
make a comic impression on me but a purely
pleasurable one, nor by the fact that this com-
parison with the infantile produces a comic
effect only when any other use of the differ-
ence is avoided. For the conditions of the
discharge come thereby into consideration.
Everything that confines a psychic process in
an association of ideas works against the dis-
charge of the surplus occupation of energy
and directs the same to other utilization; what-
ever isolates a psychic act favors the discharge.
By consciously focussing on the child as the
person of comparison, the discharge necessary
for the production of comic pleasure therefore
becomes impossible; only in foreconscious en-
ergetic states is there a similar approach to the
isolation which we may moreover also ascribe
to the psychic processes in the child. The ad-
dition to the comparison: “Thus I have also
done it as a child,” from which the comic ef-
fect would emanate, could come into consider-
ation for the average difference only when no

366

other association could obtain control over the
freed surplus.

If we still continue with our attempt to find
the nature of the comic in the foreconscious
association of the infantile, we have to go a
step further than Bergson and admit that the
comparison resulting in the comic need not
necessarily awake old childish pleasure and
play, but that it is enough if it touches the
childish nature in general, perhaps even child-
ish pain. Herein we deviate from Bergson,
but remain consistent with ourselves, when we
connect the comic pleasure not with remem-
bered pleasure but always with a comparison.
This is possible, for cases of the first kind com-
prise in a measure those which are regularly
and irresistibly comic. Let us now draw up
the scheme of the comic possibilities instanced
above. We stated that the comic difference
would be found either

(a) through a comparison between the other
and one’s self, or (b) through a comparison al-
together within the other, or (c) through a
comparison altogether within one’s self.

In the first case the other would appear to
me as a child, in the second he would put him-
self on the level of a child, and in the third I
would find the child in myself. To the first
class belong the comic of movement and of

367

THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC

forms, of psychic activity and of character.
The infantile corresponding to it would be the
motion-impulse and the inferior mental and
moral development of the child, so that the fool
would perhaps become comical to me by re-
minding me of a lazy child, and the bad per-
son by reminding me of a naughty child.
The only time one might speak of a childish
pleasure lost to grown-ups would be where the
child’s own motion pleasure came into consid-
eration.

The second case, in which the comic alto-
gether depends on identification with the other,
comprises numerous possibilities such as the
comic situation, exaggeration (caricature), imi-
tation, degradation, and unmasking. It is
under this head that the presentation of in-
fantile viewpoints mostly take place. For the
comic situation is largely based on embarrass-
ment, in which we feel again the helplessness
of the child. The worst of these embarrass-
ments, the disturbance of other activities
through the imperative demands of natural
wants, corresponds to the child’s lack of con-
trol of the physical functions. Where the
comic situation acts through repetitions it is
based on the pleasure of constant repetition
peculiar to the child (asking questions, telling
stories), through which it makes itself a

368

nuisance to grown-
ups. Exaggeration, which
also affords pleasure even to the grown-up in
so far as it is justified by his reason, corre-
sponds to the characteristic want of moderation
in the child, and its ignorance of all quanti-
tative relations which it later really learns to
know as qualitative. To keep within bounds,
to practice moderation even in permissible feel-
ings is a late fruit of education, and is gained
through opposing inhibitions of the psychic
activity acquired in the same association.
Wherever this association is weakened as in the
unconscious of dreams and in the monoideation
of the psychoneuroses, the want of moderation
of the child again makes its appearance.

The understanding of comic imitation has
caused us many difficulties so long as we left
out of consideration the infantile factor. But
imitation is the child’s best art and is the im-
pelling motive of most of its playing. The
child’s ambition is not so much to distinguish
himself among his equals as to imitate the big
fellows. The relation of the child to the
grown-up determines also the comic of degrada-
tion, which corresponds to the lowering of the
grown-up in the life of the child. Few things
can afford the child greater pleasure than when
the grown-up lowers himself to its level, disre-
gards his superiority, and plays with the child

369

THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC

as its equal. The alleviation which furnishes
the child pure pleasure is a debasement used by
the adult as a means of making things comic
and as a source of comic pleasure. As for un-
masking we know that it is based on degrada-
tion.

The infantile determination of the third case,
the comic of expectation, presents most of the
difficulties; this really explains why those au-
thors who put this case to the foreground in
their conception of the comic, found no occa-
sion to consider the infantile factor in their
studies of the comic. The comic of expecta-
tion is farthest from the child’s thoughts, the
ability to understand this is the latest quality
to appear in him. Most of those cases which
produce a comic effect in the grown-up are
probably felt by the child as a disappointment.
One can refer, however, to the blissful ex-
pectation and gullibility of the child in order
to understand why one considers himself as
comical “as a child,” when he succumbs to
comic disappointment.

If the preceding remarks produce a certain
probability that the comic feeling may be
translated into the thought; everything is comic
that does not fit the grown-up, I still do not
feel bold enough,—in view of my whole posi-
tion to the problem of the comic—to defend

370

this last proposition with the same earnestness
as those that I formulated before. I am una-
ble to decide whether the lowering to the level
of the child is only a special case of comic
degradation, or whether everything comical
fundamentally depends on the degradation to
the level of the child.¹

Humor

An examination of the comic, however super-
ficial it may be, would be most incomplete if
it did not devote at least a few remarks to the
consideration of humor. There is so little
doubt as to the essential relationship between
the two that a tentative explanation of the
comic must furnish at least one component for
the understanding of humor. It does not mat-
ter how much appropriate and important ma-
terial was presented as an appreciation of hu-
mor, which, as one of the highest psychic func-
tions, enjoys the special favor of thinkers, we
still cannot elude the temptation to express
its essence through an approach to the formulæ
given for wit and the comic.

¹That comic pleasure has its source in the “quantitative con-
trast,” in the comparison of big and small, which ultimately also
expresses the essential relation of the child to the grown-up,
would indeed be a peculiar coincidence if the comic had nothing
else to do with the infantile.

371

THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC

We have heard that the release of painful
emotions is the strongest hindrance to the
comic effect. Just as aimless motion causes
harm, stupidity mischief, and disappointment
pain;—the possibility of a comic effect eventu-
ally ends, at least for him who cannot defend
himself against such pain, who is himself af-
fected by it or must participate in it, whereas
the disinterested party shows by his behavior
that the situation of the case in question con-
tains everything necessary to produce a comic
effect. Humor is thus a means to gain pleas-
ure despite the painful affects which disturb
it; it acts as a substitute for this affective de-
velopment, and takes its place. If we are in
a situation which tempts us to liberate painful
affects according to our habits, and motives
then urge us to suppress these affects statu
nascendi, we have the conditions for humor.
In the cases just cited the person affected by
misfortune, pain, etc., could obtain humoristic
pleasure while the disinterested party laughs
over the comic pleasure. We can only say that
the pleasure of humor results at the cost of
this discontinued liberation of affect; it orig-
inates through the economized expenditure of
affect.

372

The Economy in Expenditure of Affect

Humor is the most self-sufficient of the
forms of the comic; its process consummating
itself in one single person and the participation
of another adds nothing new to it. I can
enjoy the pleasure of humor originating in my
self without feeling the necessity of imparting
it to another. It is not easy to tell what hap-
pens during the production of humoristic pleas-
ure in a person; but one gains a certain in-
sight by investigating these cases of humor
which have emanated from persons with whom
we have entered into a sympathetic under-
standing. By sympathetically understanding
the humoristic person in these cases one gets
the same pleasure. The coarsest form of hu-
mor, the so-called humor of the gallows or
grim-humor (Galgenhumor), may enlighten
us in this regard. The rogue, on being led to
execution on Monday, remarked: “Yes, this
week is beginning well.” This is really a wit-
ticism, as the remark is quite appropriate in it-
self, on the other hand it is displaced in the
most nonsensical fashion, as there can be no
further happening for him this week. But it
required humor to make such wit, that is, to
overlook what distinguished the beginning of
this week from other weeks, and to deny the

373

difference which could give rise to motives for
very particular emotional feelings. The case
is the same when on the way to the gallows he
requests a neckerchief for his bare neck, in
order to guard against taking cold, a precau-
tion which would be quite praiseworthy under
different circumstances, but becomes exceed-
ingly superfluous and indifferent in view of
the impending fate of this same neck. We
must say that there is something like greatness
of soul in this blague, in this clinging to his
usual nature and in deviating from that which
would overthrow and drive this nature into
despair. This form of grandeur of humor thus
appears unmistakably in cases in which our
admiration is not inhibited by the circum-
stances of the humoristic person.

In Victor Hugo’s Ernani the bandit who
entered into a conspiracy against his king,
Charles I, of Spain, (Charles V, as the Ger-
man Emperor), falls into the hands of his
most powerful enemy; he foresees his fate; as
one convicted of high treason his head will
fall. But this prospect does not deter him
from introducing himself as a hereditary
Grandee of Spain and from declaring that he
has no intention of waiving any prerogative
belonging to such personage. A Grandee of

374

Spain could appear before his royal master
with his head covered. Well:

“Nos têtes ont le droit
De tomber couvertes devant de toi.”¹

This is excellent humor and if we do not laugh
on hearing it, it is because our admiration cov-
ers the humoristic pleasure. In the case of the
rogue who did not wish to take cold on the
way to the gallows we roar with laughter.
The situation which should have driven this
criminal to despair, might have evoked in us
intense pity, but this pity is inhibited because
we understand that he who is most concerned
is quite indifferent to the situation. As a re-
sult of this understanding the expenditure for
pity, which was already prepared in us, became
inapplicable and we laughed it off. The in-
difference of the rogue, which we notice has
cost him a great expenditure of psychic labor,
infects us as it were.

Economy of sympathy is one of the most
frequent sources of humoristic pleasure.
Mark Twain’s humor usually follows this
mechanism. When he tells us about the life of
his brother, how, as an employee in a large
road-
building enterprise, he was hurled into
the air through a premature explosion of a

¹“Our heads have the right to fall covered before thee.”

375

THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC

blast, to come to earth again far from the place
where he was working, feelings of sympathy
for this unfortunate are invariably aroused in
us. We should like to inquire whether he sus-
tained no injury in this accident; but the con
tinuation of the story that the brother lost a
half-day’s pay for being away from the place
he worked diverts us entirely from sympathy
and makes us almost as hard-hearted as that
employer, and just as indifferent to the possi-
ble injury to the victim’s health. Another time
Mark Twain presents us his pedigree, which he
traces back almost as far back as one of the
companions of Columbus. But after describ-
ing the character of this ancestor, whose entire
possessions consisted of several pieces of linen
each bearing a different mark, we cannot help
laughing at the expense of the stored-up piety,
a piety which characterized our frame of mind
at the beginning of this family history. The
mechanism of humoristic pleasure is not dis-
turbed by our knowing that this family history
is a fictitious one, and that this fiction serves
a satirical tendency to expose the embellish-
ments which result in imparting such pedigrees
to others; it is just as independent of the con-
ditions of reality as the manufactured comic.
Another of Mark Twain’s stories relates how
his brother constructed for himself subter-

376

ranean quarters into which he brought a bed, a
table, and a lamp, and that as a roof he used
a large piece of sail-cloth with a hole through
the centre; how during the night after the
room was completed, a cow being driven home
fell through the opening in the ceiling on to
the table and extinguished the lamp; how his
brother helped patiently to hoist the animal out
and to rearrange everything; how he did the
same thing when the same disturbance was re-
peated the following night; and then every
succeeding night; such a story becomes com-
ical through repetition. But Mark Twain
closes with the information that in the forty-
sixth night when the cow again fell through,
his brother finally remarked that the thing was
beginning to grow monotonous; and here we
can no longer restrain our humoristic pleasure,
for we had long expected to hear how the
brother would express his anger over this
chronic malheur. The slight humor which we
draw from our own life we usually produce at
the expense of anger instead of irritating our-
selves.¹

¹ The excellent humoristic effect of a character like that of
the fat knight, Sir John Falstaff, is based on economized con-
tempt and indignation. To be sure we recognize in him the
unworthy glutton and fashionably dressed swindler, but our con-
demnation is disarmed through a whole series of factors. We
understand that he knows himself to be just as we estimate him;

377

Forms of Humor

The forms of humor are extraordinarily
varied according to the nature of the emotional
feelings which are economized in favor of hu-
mor, as sympathy, anger, pain, compassion,

he impresses us through his wit; and
besides that, his physical
deformity produces a contact-effect in favor of a comic con-
ception of his personality instead of a serious one; as if our de-
mands for morality and honor must recoil from such a big
stomach. His activities are altogether harmless and are almost
excused by the comic lowness of those he deceives. We admit
that the poor devil has a right to live and enjoy himself like any
one else, and we almost pity him because in the principal situa-
tion we find him a puppet in the hands of one much his superior.
It is for this reason that we cannot bear him any grudge and
turn all we economize in him in indignation into comic pleasure
which he otherwise provides. Sir John’s own humor really
emanates from the superiority of an ego which neither his physical
nor his moral defects can rob of its joviality and security.

On the other hand the courageous knight Don Quixote de la
Mancha is a figure who possesses no humor, and in his serious-
ness furnishes us a pleasure which can be called humoristic
although its mechanism shows a decided deviation from that of
humor. Originally Don Quixote is a purely comic figure, a big
child whose fancies from his books on knighthood have gone to
his head. It is known that at first the poet wanted to show only
that phase of his character, and that the creation gradually out-
grew the author’s original intentions. But after the poet en-
dowed this ludicrous person with the profoundest wisdom and
noblest aims and made him the symbolic representation of an
idealism, a man who believed in the realization of his aims, who
took duties seriously and promises literally, he ceased to be a
comic personality. Like humoristic pleasure which results from
a prevention of emotional feelings it originates here through the
disturbance of comic pleasure. However, in these examples we
already depart perceptibly from the simple cases of humor.

378

etc. And this series seems incomplete because
the sphere of humor experiences a constant en-
largement, as often as an artist or writer suc-
ceeds in mastering humoristically the, as yet,
unconquered emotional feelings and in making
them, through artifices similar to those in the
above example, a source of humoristic pleas-
ure. Thus the artists of Simplicissimus
have worked wonders in gaining humor at the
expense of fear and disgust. The manifesta-
tions of humor are above all determined by two
peculiarities, which are connected with the con-
ditions of its origin. In the first place, humor
may appear fused with wit or any other form
of the comic; whereby it is entrusted with the
task of removing a possible emotional devel-
opment which would form a hindrance to the
pleasurable effect. Secondly, it can entirely
set aside this emotional development or only
partially, which is really the more frequent
case, because the simpler function and the dif-
ferent forms of “broken”¹ humor, results in
that humor which smiles under its tears. It
withdraws from the affect a part of its energy
and gives instead the accompanying humoristic
sound.

As may be noticed by former examples the

¹A term which is used in quite a different sense in the Aesthetik
of Theo. Vischer.

379

humoristic pleasure gained by entering into
sympathy with a thing results from a special
technique resembling displacement through
which the liberation of affect held ready is dis-
appointed and the energy occupation is de-
flected to other, and, not often, to secondary
matters. This does not help us, however, to
understand the process by which the displace-
ment from the development of affect proceeds
in the humoristic person himself. We see that
the recipient intimates the producer of the
humor in his psychic processes, but we
discover nothing thereby concerning the
forces which make this process possible in
the latter.

We can only say, when, for example, some-
body succeeds in paying no heed to a painful
affect because he holds before himself the
greatness of the world’s interest as a contrast
to his own smallness, that we see in this no
function of humor but one of philosophic
thinking, and we gain no pleasure even if we
put ourselves into his train of thought. The
humoristic displacement is therefore just as
impossible in the light of conscious attention as
is the comic comparison; like the latter it is
connected with the condition to remain in the
foreconscious—that is to say, to remain auto-
matic.

381

elevation of his ego, of which humoristic dis-
placement gives evidence,—the translation of
which would read: I am too big to have these
causes affect me painfully—he could find in
the comparison of his present ego with his in-
fantile ego. This conception is to some extent
confirmed by the rôle which falls to the infan-
tile in the neurotic processes of repression.

The Relation of Humor to Wit and Comic

On the whole humor is closer to the comic
than wit. Like the former its psychic locali-
zation is in the foreconscious, whereas wit,
as we had to assume, is formed as a compro-
mise between the unconscious and the forecon-
scious. On the other hand, humor has no share
in the peculiar nature in which wit and the
comic meet, a peculiarity which perhaps we have
not hitherto emphasized strongly enough. It
is a condition for the origin of the comic that
we be induced to apply—either simultaneously
or in rapid succession—to the same thought
function two different modes of ideas, between
which the “comparison” then takes place and
thus forms the comic difference. Such differ-
ences originate between the expenditure of the
stranger and one’s own, between the usual ex-
penditure and the emergency expenditure, be-
 

382

tween an anticipated expenditure and one
which has already occurred.¹

The difference between two forms of concep-
tion resulting simultaneously, which work with
different expenditures, comes into considera-
tion in wit, in respect to the hearer. The one
of these two conceptions, by taking the hints
contained in the witticism, follows the train of
thought through the unconscious, while the
other conception remains on the surface and
presents the witticism like any wording from
the foreconscious which has become conscious.
Perhaps it would not be considered an unjusti-
fied statement if we should refer the pleasure
of the witticism heard to the difference be-
tween these two forms of presentation.

Concerning wit we here repeat our former
statement concerning its Janus-like double-
facedness, a simile we used when the relation
between wit and the comic still appeared to us
unsettled.²

¹If one does not hesitate to do some violence to the concep-
tion of expectation, one may ascribe—according to the process
of Lipps—a very large sphere of the comic to the comic of ex-
pectation; but probably the most original cases of the comic which
result through a comparison of a strange expenditure with one’s
own will fit least into this conception.

²The characteristic of the “double face” naturally did not
escape the authors. Melinaud, from whom I borrowed the above
expression, conceives the condition for laughing in the following
formula: “Ce qui fait rire c’est qui est à la fois, d’un côté,
absurde et de de l’autre, familier” (“Pourquoi rit-on?” Revue de

383

The character thus put into the foreground
becomes indistinct when we deal with humor.
To be sure, we feel the humoristic pleasure
where an emotional feeling is evaded, which we
might have expected as a pleasure usually be-
longing to the situation; and in so far humor
really falls under the broadened conception of
the comic of expectation. But in humor it is
no longer a question of two different kinds of
presentations having the same content; the
fact that the situation comes under the domi-
nation of a painful emotional feeling which
should have been avoided, puts an end to pos-
sible comparison with the nature in the comic
and in wit. The humoristic displacement is
really a case of that different kind of utiliza-
tion of a freed expenditure which proved to
be so dangerous for the comic effect.

Formulæ for Wit, Comic, and Humor

Now, that we have reduced the mechanism
of humoristic pleasure to a formula analogous
deux mondes, February, 1895). This formula fits in better with
wit than with the comic, but it really does not altogether cover
the former. Bergson (l. c., p. 96) defines the comic situation by
the “reciprocal interference of series,” and states: “A situation
is invariably comic when it belongs simultaneously to two al-
together independent series of events and is capable of being
interpreted in two entirely different meanings at the same time.”
According to Lipps the comic is “the greatness and smallness of
the same.”

384

to the formula of comic pleasure and of wit,
we are at the end of our task. It has seemed
to us that the pleasure of wit originates from
an economy of expenditure in inhibition, of
the comic from an economy of expenditure in
thought, and of humor from an economy of ex-
penditure in feeling. All three activities of
our psychic apparatus derive pleasure from
economy. They all strive to bring back from
the psychic activity a pleasure which has really
been lost in the development of this activity.
For the euphoria which we are thus striving
to obtain is nothing but the state of a bygone
time in which we were wont to defray our
psychic work with slight expenditure. It is
the state of our childhood in which we did not
know the comic, were incapable of wit, and did
not need humor to make us happy.