Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/129

 je souffre!” The husband jumped up, but the physician stopped him saying, “That’s nothing; let us play on.” A little while later the woman in labor-pains was heard again: “My God, my God, what pains!” “Don’t you want to go in, Doctor?” asked the baron. “By no means, it is not yet time,” answered the doctor. At last there rang from the adjacent room the unmistakable cry, “A-a-a-ai-e-e-e-e-e-e-E-E-E!” The physician then threw down the cards and said, “Now it’s time.”

How the pain allows the original nature to break through all the strata of education, and how an important decision is rightly made dependent upon a seemingly inconsequential utterance—both are shown in this good joke by the successive changes in the cries of this child-bearing lady of quality.

Comparison

Another kind of indirect expression of which wit makes use is comparison, which we have not discussed so far because an examination of comparison touches upon new difficulties, or rather it reveals difficulties which have made their appearance on other occasions. We have already admitted that in many of the examples examined we could not banish all doubts as