T h e technique of this group of jokes can be described as ''''condensation accompanied by slight modification'''', and it may be suspected that the slighter the modification1 the better will
THE STANDARD EDITION OF THE COMPLETE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKS OF S I G M U N D F R E U D Translatedfrom the German under the General Editorship of JAMES STRACHEY In Collaboration with ANNA FREUD Assisted by A L I X STRACHEY and ALAN T Y S O N VOLUME VIII (1905) Jokes and the their Relation to Unconscious SIGMUND FREUD IN 1906 LONDON THE HOGARTH PRESS AND THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS PUBLISHED BY THE HOGARTH PRESS LIMITED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL, LTD LONDON * CLARKE, IRWIN AND CO LTD TORONTO CONTENTS VOLUME EIGHT J O K E S AND T H E I R R E L A T I O N T O T H E U N C O N S C I O U S (1905) This EditionfirstPublished in i960 Reprinted 196s, 1964, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1978 and 1981 ^ fr) ISBN O 7012 O067 Editor's Preface page A ANALYTIC PART I INTRODUCTION II THE TECHNIQUE OF JOKES III THE PURPOSES OF JOKES B SYNTHETIC PART IV THE MECHANISM OF PLEASURE AND THE PSYCHOGENESIS OF JOKES V THE MOTIVES OF JOKES—JOKES AS A SOCIAL PROCESS 16 90 117 140 C THEORETIC PART VI THE RELATION OF JOKES T O DREAMS AND T O T H E UNCONSCIOUS VII JOKES AND THE SPECIES OF THE COMIC All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of The Hogarth Press LtrL TRANSLATION AND EDITORIAL MATTER © THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANGELA RICHARDS i960 PRINTED AND BOUND IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BUTLER AND TANNER LTD., FROME 159 181 APPENDIX: Franz Brentano's Riddles 237 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND AUTHOR INDEX 239 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 243 INDEX OF JOKES 245 GENERAL INDEX 249 FRONTISPIECE Sigmund Freud in 1906 (Aet 50) By Permission of Sigmund Freud Copyrights PUBLISHED BY THE HOGARTH PRESS LIMITED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL, LTD LONDON * CLARKE, IRWIN AND CO LTD TORONTO CONTENTS VOLUME EIGHT J O K E S AND T H E I R R E L A T I O N T O T H E U N C O N S C I O U S (1905) This EditionfirstPublished in i960 Reprinted 196s, 1964, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1978 and 1981 ^ fr) ISBN O 7012 O067 Editor's Preface page A ANALYTIC PART I INTRODUCTION II THE TECHNIQUE OF JOKES III THE PURPOSES OF JOKES B SYNTHETIC PART IV THE MECHANISM OF PLEASURE AND THE PSYCHOGENESIS OF JOKES V THE MOTIVES OF JOKES—JOKES AS A SOCIAL PROCESS 16 90 117 140 C THEORETIC PART VI THE RELATION OF JOKES T O DREAMS AND T O T H E UNCONSCIOUS VII JOKES AND THE SPECIES OF THE COMIC All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of The Hogarth Press LtrL TRANSLATION AND EDITORIAL MATTER © THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND ANGELA RICHARDS i960 PRINTED AND BOUND IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BUTLER AND TANNER LTD., FROME 159 181 APPENDIX: Franz Brentano's Riddles 237 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND AUTHOR INDEX 239 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 243 INDEX OF JOKES 245 GENERAL INDEX 249 FRONTISPIECE Sigmund Freud in 1906 (Aet 50) By Permission of Sigmund Freud Copyrights JOKES AND THEIR THE UNCONSCIOUS (1905) RELATION TO JOKES AND THEIR THE UNCONSCIOUS (1905) RELATION TO EDITOR'S PREFACE DER WITZ UND SEINE BEZIEHUNG Z U M UNBEWUSSTEN (a) GERMAN EDITIONS: 1905 1912 1921 1925 1925 1940 Leipzig and Vienna: Deuticke Pp ii + 206 2nd ed Same publishers (With a few small additions.) Pp iv + 207 3rd ed Same publishers (Unchanged.) Pp iv + 207 4th ed Same publishers (Unchanged.) Pp iv + 207 G.S., 9, 1-269 (Unchanged.) G.W., 6, 1-285 (Unchanged.) (b) ENGLISH TRANSLATION: 1916 1917 1922 1938 Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious New York: Moffat, Yard Pp ix + 388 (Tr A A Brill.) (1917, 2nd ed.) London: T Fisher Unwin Pp ix + 388 (Same as above.) London: Kegan Paul (Reprint of above.) I n The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud Pp 633-803 New York: Random House (Same translation.) The present, entirely new, translation, with the title Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, is by James Strachey I n the course of discussing the relation between jokes and dreams, Freud mentions his own 'subjective reason for taking up the problem of jokes' (p 173, below) This was, put briefly, the fact that when Wilhelm Fliess was reading the proofs of The Interpretation of Dreams in the autumn of 1899, he complained that the dreams were too full ofjokes The episode had already been reported in a footnote to the first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams itself (1900a), Standard Ed., 4, 297-8 n.', but we can now date it exactly, for we have the letter in which Freud EDITOR'S PREFACE DER WITZ UND SEINE BEZIEHUNG Z U M UNBEWUSSTEN (a) GERMAN EDITIONS: 1905 1912 1921 1925 1925 1940 Leipzig and Vienna: Deuticke Pp ii + 206 2nd ed Same publishers (With a few small additions.) Pp iv + 207 3rd ed Same publishers (Unchanged.) Pp iv + 207 4th ed Same publishers (Unchanged.) Pp iv + 207 G.S., 9, 1-269 (Unchanged.) G.W., 6, 1-285 (Unchanged.) (b) ENGLISH TRANSLATION: 1916 1917 1922 1938 Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious New York: Moffat, Yard Pp ix + 388 (Tr A A Brill.) (1917, 2nd ed.) London: T Fisher Unwin Pp ix + 388 (Same as above.) London: Kegan Paul (Reprint of above.) I n The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud Pp 633-803 New York: Random House (Same translation.) The present, entirely new, translation, with the title Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, is by James Strachey I n the course of discussing the relation between jokes and dreams, Freud mentions his own 'subjective reason for taking up the problem of jokes' (p 173, below) This was, put briefly, the fact that when Wilhelm Fliess was reading the proofs of The Interpretation of Dreams in the autumn of 1899, he complained that the dreams were too full ofjokes The episode had already been reported in a footnote to the first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams itself (1900a), Standard Ed., 4, 297-8 n.', but we can now date it exactly, for we have the letter in which Freud EDITOR'S PREFACE replied to Fliess's complaint It was written on September 11, 1899, from Berchtesgaden, where the finishing touches were being put to the book, and announces that Freud intends to insert an explanation in it of the curious fact of the presence in dreams of what appear to be jokes (Freud, 1950a, Letter 118) The episode acted, no doubt, as a precipitating factor, and led to Freud's giving closer attention to the subject; but it cannot possibly have been the origin of his interest in it There is ample evidence that it had been in his mind for several years earlier The very fact that he was ready with an immediate answer to Fliess's criticism shows that this must have been so; and it is confirmed by the reference to the mechanism of'comic' effects, which appears on a later page of The Interpretation of Dreams {Standard Ed., 5, 605) and which forestalls one of the main points in the final chapter of the present work But it was invitable that as soon as Freud begean his close investigation of dreams he would be struck by the frequency with which tructusres resembling jokes figure in the dreams themselves or their associations The Interpretation of Dreams is full of examples of this, but perhaps the earliest one recorded is the punning dream of Frau Cacilie M., reported in a footnote at the end of the case history of Fraulein Elisabeth von R in the Studies on Hysteria (1895d"), Standard Ed., 2, 181 n But, quite apart from dreams, there is evidence of Freud's early theoretical interest in jokes I n a letter to Fliess ofJ u n e 12, 1897 (Freud, 1950a, Letter 65), after quoting a joke about two Schnorrer, Freud wrote: 'I must confess that for some time past I have been putting together a collection of Jewish anecdotes of deep significance.' A few months later, on September 21, 1897, he quotes another Jewish story as being 'from my collection' (ibid., Letter 69), and a number of others appear in the Fliess correspondence and also in The Interpretation of Dreams (See, in particular, a comment on these stories in Chapter V, Section B, Standard Ed., 4, 194-5.) I t was from this collection, of course, that he derived the many examples of such anecdotes on which his theories are so largely based Another influence which was of some importance to Freud at about this time was that of Theodor Lipps Lipps (1851— 1914) was a Munich professor who wrote on psychology and aesthetics, and who is accredited with having introduced the E D I T O R ' S PREFACE term 'Einfiihlung' ('empathy') Freud's interest in him was probably first attracted by a paper on the unconscious which he read at a psychological congress in 1897 I t is the basis of a long discussion in the last chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams {Standard Ed., 5,611 ff.) We know from the Fliess letters that in August and September, 1898, Freud was reading an earlier book by Lipps on The Basic Facts of Mental Life (1883) and was again struck by his remarks on the unconscious (Freud, 1950a, Letters 94, 95 and 97) But in 1898 there appeared yet another work from Lipps and this time on a more specialized subject— Komik und Humor And it was this work, as Freud tells us at the very beginning of the present study, which encouraged him to embark upon it I t was on ground thus prepared that the seed of Fliess's critical comment fell, but even so several more years were to elapse before the moment of fruition Freud published three major works in 1905: the 'Dora' case history, which appeared in the autumn though it was written for the most part four years earlier, the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality a n d Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious Work on the last two books proceeded simultaneously: Ernest Jones (1955, 13) tells us that Freud kept the two manuscripts on adjoining tables and added to one or the other according to his mood The books were published almost simultaneously, and it is not entirely certain which was the earlier The publisher's issue-number for the Three Essays is 1124 and for the Jokes 1128; but Jones (ibid., 375 n.) reports that this last number was 'wrong', which might imply that the order should be reversed I n the same passage, however, Jones definitely asserts that the Jokes 'appeared just after the other book' The actual date of publication must have been before the beginning of J u n e , for a long and favourable review appeared in the Vienna daily paper Die %eit on J u n e T h e later history of the book was very different from that of Freud's other major works of this period The Interpretation of Dreams, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and the Three Essays were all of them expanded and modified almost out of recognition in their later editions Half-a-dozen small additions were In a private communication he ascribed this statement to Freud himself EDITOR'S PREFACE replied to Fliess's complaint It was written on September 11, 1899, from Berchtesgaden, where the finishing touches were being put to the book, and announces that Freud intends to insert an explanation in it of the curious fact of the presence in dreams of what appear to be jokes (Freud, 1950a, Letter 118) The episode acted, no doubt, as a precipitating factor, and led to Freud's giving closer attention to the subject; but it cannot possibly have been the origin of his interest in it There is ample evidence that it had been in his mind for several years earlier The very fact that he was ready with an immediate answer to Fliess's criticism shows that this must have been so; and it is confirmed by the reference to the mechanism of'comic' effects, which appears on a later page of The Interpretation of Dreams {Standard Ed., 5, 605) and which forestalls one of the main points in the final chapter of the present work But it was invitable that as soon as Freud begean his close investigation of dreams he would be struck by the frequency with which tructusres resembling jokes figure in the dreams themselves or their associations The Interpretation of Dreams is full of examples of this, but perhaps the earliest one recorded is the punning dream of Frau Cacilie M., reported in a footnote at the end of the case history of Fraulein Elisabeth von R in the Studies on Hysteria (1895d"), Standard Ed., 2, 181 n But, quite apart from dreams, there is evidence of Freud's early theoretical interest in jokes I n a letter to Fliess ofJ u n e 12, 1897 (Freud, 1950a, Letter 65), after quoting a joke about two Schnorrer, Freud wrote: 'I must confess that for some time past I have been putting together a collection of Jewish anecdotes of deep significance.' A few months later, on September 21, 1897, he quotes another Jewish story as being 'from my collection' (ibid., Letter 69), and a number of others appear in the Fliess correspondence and also in The Interpretation of Dreams (See, in particular, a comment on these stories in Chapter V, Section B, Standard Ed., 4, 194-5.) I t was from this collection, of course, that he derived the many examples of such anecdotes on which his theories are so largely based Another influence which was of some importance to Freud at about this time was that of Theodor Lipps Lipps (1851— 1914) was a Munich professor who wrote on psychology and aesthetics, and who is accredited with having introduced the E D I T O R ' S PREFACE term 'Einfiihlung' ('empathy') Freud's interest in him was probably first attracted by a paper on the unconscious which he read at a psychological congress in 1897 I t is the basis of a long discussion in the last chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams {Standard Ed., 5,611 ff.) We know from the Fliess letters that in August and September, 1898, Freud was reading an earlier book by Lipps on The Basic Facts of Mental Life (1883) and was again struck by his remarks on the unconscious (Freud, 1950a, Letters 94, 95 and 97) But in 1898 there appeared yet another work from Lipps and this time on a more specialized subject— Komik und Humor And it was this work, as Freud tells us at the very beginning of the present study, which encouraged him to embark upon it I t was on ground thus prepared that the seed of Fliess's critical comment fell, but even so several more years were to elapse before the moment of fruition Freud published three major works in 1905: the 'Dora' case history, which appeared in the autumn though it was written for the most part four years earlier, the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality a n d Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious Work on the last two books proceeded simultaneously: Ernest Jones (1955, 13) tells us that Freud kept the two manuscripts on adjoining tables and added to one or the other according to his mood The books were published almost simultaneously, and it is not entirely certain which was the earlier The publisher's issue-number for the Three Essays is 1124 and for the Jokes 1128; but Jones (ibid., 375 n.) reports that this last number was 'wrong', which might imply that the order should be reversed I n the same passage, however, Jones definitely asserts that the Jokes 'appeared just after the other book' The actual date of publication must have been before the beginning of J u n e , for a long and favourable review appeared in the Vienna daily paper Die %eit on J u n e T h e later history of the book was very different from that of Freud's other major works of this period The Interpretation of Dreams, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and the Three Essays were all of them expanded and modified almost out of recognition in their later editions Half-a-dozen small additions were In a private communication he ascribed this statement to Freud himself EDITOR'S PREFACE made to the Jokes when it reached its second edition in 1912, but no further changes were ever made in it It seems possible that this is related to the fact that this book lies somewhat apart from the rest of Freud's writings He himself may have taken this view of it His references to it in other works are comparatively few;2 in the Introductory Lectures (1916— 1917, Lecture XV) he speaks of its having temporarily led him aside from his path; and in the Autobiographical Study (1925a"), Standard Ed., 20, 65-6, there is even what looks like a slightly depreciatory reference to it Then, unexpectedly, after an interval of more than twenty years, he picked up the thread again with his short paper on 'Humour' (1927a"), in which he used his newly propounded structural view of the mind to throw a fresh light on an obscure problem Ernest Jones describes this as the least known of Freud's works, and that is certainly, and not surprisingly, true of nonGerman readers 'Traduttore—Traditore!' The words—one of the jokes discussed by Freud below (p 34)—might appropriately be emblazoned on the title-page of the present volume Many of Freud's works raise acute difficulties for the translator, but this presents a special case Here, as with The Interpretation of Dreams and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and perhaps to a greater extent, we are faced by large numbers of examples involving a play upon words that is untranslatable And here, as in these other cases, we can no more than explain the rather uncompromising policy adopted in this edition There are two methods one or other of which has usually been adopted in dealing with such intractable examples—either to drop them out altogether or to replace them by examples of the translator's own Neither of these methods seems suitable to an edition which is intended to present English readers with Freud's own ideas as accurately as possible Here, therefore, we have to be contented with giving the critical words in the original German and explaining them as shortly as possible in square brackets or footnotes In the present edition the sections into which the author divided the long chapters have been numbered for convenience of reference A small exception will be found in a paragraph on obscene jokes in Freud's open letter to Dr F S Krauss (1910/% Standard Ed., 11,234 E D I T O R ' S PREFACE Inevitably, of course, the joke disappears in the process But it must be remembered that, by either of the alternative methods, what disappears are portions, and sometimes most interesting portions, of Freud's arguments And, presumably, these, and not a moment's amusement, are what the reader has in view There is, however, a much more serious difficulty in translating this particular work—a terminological difficulty which runs through the whole of it By a strange fatality (into whose causes it would be interesting to enquire) the German and English terms covering the phenomena discussed in these pages seem never to coincide: they seem always too narrow or too wide—to leave gaps between them or to overlap A major problem faces us with the very title of the book, 'Der Witz' T o translate it 'Wit' opens the door to unfortunate misapprehensions I n ordinary English usage 'wit' and 'witty' have a highly restricted meaning and are applied only to the most refined and intellectual kind of jokes The briefest inspection of the examples in these pages will show that 'Witz' and 'witzig' have a far wider connotation 'Joke' on the other hand seems itself to be too wide and to cover the German 'Scherz' as well The only solution in this and similar dilemmas has seemed to be to adopt one English word for some corresponding German one, and to keep to it quite consistently and invariably even if in some particular context it seems the wrong one I n this way the reader will at least be able to form his own conclusion as to the sense in which Freud is using the word Thus, throughout the book 'Witz' has been rendered 'joke' and 'Scherz' 'jest' There is great trouble with the adjective 'witzig', which is used here in most cases simply as the qualifying adjective to 'Witz' The Concise Oxford Dictionary actually gives, without comment, an adjective 'joky' The word would have saved the translator innumerable clumsy periphrases, but he confesses that he had not the nerve to use it The only places in which 'Witz' has been translated 'wit' are two or three (e.g on p 140) in which 'Der Witz', incidentally, is used both for the mental faculty and for its product—for 'wittiness' and 'the witticism', to use renderings that have been rejected here The German word can be used besides in a much vaguer sense, for 'ingenuity'; but the English 'wit', for the matter of that, also has its wider usages