Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/122

 namely, that physicians are obliged to read and study constantly because remedies and drugs once considered efficacious are later rejected as useless, and that despite the physician’s best efforts the patient often refuses to pay for the treatment, one of the doctors present remarked: “Yes, every drug has its day,” to which another added, “But not every Doc gets his pay.” These two witty remarks are both modifications with allusion of the well-known saying, “Every dog has his day.” But here, too, the technique could be described as fusion with modification.

If the modification contents itself with a change in letters, allusions through modifications are barely distinguishable from condensation with substitutive formation, as shown in this example: “Mellingitis,” the allusion to the dangerous disease meningitis, refers to the danger which the conservative members of a provincial borough in England thought impended if the socialist candidate Mellon were elected.

The negative particles make very good allusions at the cost of very little changing. Heine referred to Spinoza as:

“My fellow unbeliever Spinoza.”

“We, by the Ungrace of God, Laborers, Bondsmen, Negroes, Serfs,” etc., is a manifesto (