Chapter 7. Jokes and the Species of the Comic of Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious - Study Guide by Sigmund Freud

behind humour may also have infantile connections. On the whole humour is closer to the comic than to jokes, sharing psychical localization with the comic in the preconscious whereas jokes are a compromise between the unconscious and the preconscious. However humour differs from both the comic and jokes, in one important aspect. Whilst they both require an application of two ideational methods to the same act, and thence a comparison, humour is more a case of a liberated expenditure being used elsewhere, which is indeed fatal to the comic.

8. In summary, Freud concludes that the pleasure in jokes arises from an economy in expenditure upon inhibition, the pleasure in the comic from an economy in expenditure upon ideation (upon cathexis) and the pleasure in humour from an economy in expenditure upon feeling. So, in all three pleasure is derived from an economy (as we strive for a mood of euphoria), similar to the small expenditure of energy that we can associate with our childhood, when we were ignorant of the comic, incapable of jokes and had no need of humour to make us feel happy in our life.