Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious

Freud’s study of jokes. He analyses their techniques, such as condensation, displacement, double meaning and representation by the opposite, and finds them akin to the dream-work. He distinguishes innocent jokes from tendentious ones that serve hostility or obscenity, and explains the pleasure a joke gives as a saving in psychical expenditure, as when an inhibition is lifted. He also describes the social process of telling a joke to a third person. A final part compares jokes with the comic and with humour.