unconscious for the purpose of wit-formation only revisits there the old homestead of the former playing with words. The thought is put back for a moment into the infantile state in order to regain in this way childish pleasure-sources. If, indeed, one were not already acquainted with it from the investigation of the psychology of the neuroses, wit would surely impress one with the idea that the peculiar unconscious elaboration is nothing else but the infantile type of the mental process. Only it is by no means an easy matter to grasp, in the unconscious of the adult, this peculiar infantile manner of thinking, because it is usually corrected, so to say, statu nascendi. However, it is successfully grasped in a series of cases, and then we always laugh about the “childish stupidity.” In fact every exposure of such an unconscious fact affects us in a “comical” manner.[1]
It is easier to comprehend the character of these unconscious mental processes in the utterances of patients suffering from various psychic
- ↑ Many of my patients while under psychoanalytic treatment are wont to prove regularly by their laughter that I have succeeded in demonstrating faithfully to their conscious perception the veiled unconscious; they laugh also when the content of what is disclosed does not at all justify this laughter. To be sure, it is conditional that they have approached this unconscious closely enough to grasp it when the physician has conjectured it and presented it to them.
