nothing more characteristic of it than just this technique. For wit does not have recourse to compromises as does the dream, nor does it evade the inhibition; it insists upon retaining the play with words or nonsense unaltered, but thanks to the ambiguity of words and multiplicity of thought-relations, it restricts itself to the choice of cases in which this play or nonsense may appear at the same time admissible (jest) or senseful (wit). Nothing distinguishes wit from all other psychic formations better than this double-sidedness and this double-dealing; by emphasizing the “sense in nonsense,” the authors have approached nearest the understanding of wit, at least from this angle.
Considering the unexceptional predominance of this peculiar technique in overcoming inhibitions in wit, one might find it superfluous that wit should make use of the displacement-technique even in a single case. But on the one hand certain kinds of this technique remain useful for wit as objects and sources of pleasure—as, for example, the real displacement (deviation of the trend of thought) which in fact shares in the nature of nonsense,—and on the other hand one must not forget that the highest stage of wit, tendency-wit, must frequently overcome two kinds of inhibitions which oppose
