Chapter 2. The Technique of Jokes of Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious - Study Guide by Sigmund Freud

than a condensation without substitute-formation). Furthermore, he argues that all these techniques can be united by their tendencies for brevity / compression.

Freud also raises more questions at this point such as where this tendency for economy/brevity comes from, what it signifies and how pleasure arises from it. To answer these questions Freud necessitates that more examples must be analysed.

He then looks at conceptual jokes:

3. Freud identifies the huge group of jokes known as 'puns'. However the differences between these and 'plays upon words' are not enough to merit puns as anything more than a sub class of 'plays upon words' - as in them the accent generally falls on looking for the correspondence and similarities between the two words that make up the pun.

4. Freud cites the 'novel' joke-technique that lies in diverting the reply from the meaning of the reproach. For example, of two Jews: The first asks 'Have you taken a bath?' (emphasis on bath) and the second Jew replies 'What? Is there one missing?' - replying as though the question had been 'have you taken a bath?'

5. Freud looks at the joke-technique that lies in the presentation of something bewildering and nonsensical - for example Lichtenberg's joke "He wondered how it is that cats have two holes cut in their skin precisely at the place where their eyes are." So these jokes make use of stupidity for some purpose - of exactly what, Freud is uncertain.

6. Freud looks at the joke-technique of 'faulty reasoning'. For example - 'A gentleman enters a cake shop, orders a cake, but soon takes it back to the counter and asks for a glass of liqueur instead, which he drinks and starts to leave without paying. The shop owner detains him, the gentleman asks "What do you want?" - "You've not paid for the liqueur" the shop owner replies, "but I gave you the cake in exchange for it" - "You didn't pay for that either." - "But I hadn't eaten it."'!

7. Freud looks at the joke-technique of reminding us of what we already know "allusions" or 'Indirect representations' - e.g. Fischer "Human life falls into two halves. In the first half we wish the second one would come; and in the second we wish the first one were back." Whilst this is similar to 'multiple use of the same material' Freud isolates this group due to fact that they do not contain anything that hints at a double meaning. Furthermore, this type of joke sets up new unities, or relations and definitions of ideas - Freud terms this 'unification' - analogous to the condensation of words. However Freud also notes that in this group are 'comic' examples, but they are not necessarily 'jokes' (the problem of the relation between jokes and comic is looked at later - ch. VII).

8. Freud looks at another type of indirect representation in jokes - the replacement of an appropriate 'no' by a 'yes' - e.g. the Duke on a grey horse asks the dyer "Can you dye him blue?" "Yes, of course your highness," came the answer, "if he can stand boiling." 'Yes' and 'if' or 'but' become equivalent to the appropriate 'no'. This representation by opposites is very similar to the techniques of irony (which is, by definition representation by the opposite). So it still seems that technique alone is insufficient to characterize jokes.

9. Freud finds that 'indirect representation' jokes may also make use of the contrary - representation by something similar, and that these represent a particularly comprehensive group of conceptual jokes. This group is often described as alluding to other matters - connected through things such as resemblance in sound, structure etc. For example, Lichtenberg "New spas cure well" - which alludes to the well-known proverb "New brooms sweep clean". These jokes can also take the form of 'allusion with slight modification' (almost indistinguishable from 'condensation with substitution') and 'allusion in omission' - comparable to 'condensation without formation of a substitute'. Whilst in every allusion something is omitted in the train of though leading to the allusion - the differentiation depends upon whether the more obvious thing is the gap in the wording or the substitute that fills the gap. Allusions are probably the most common methods of joking, yet again, an allusion itself does not constitute a joke - but the criterion of jokes again is unresolved.