Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/164

 source. The coarse, obscene joke, however, could not incite us to laughter, because it would cause us shame or would seem to us disgusting; we can laugh only when wit comes to our aid. What we had presumed in the beginning seems to have been confirmed, namely, that tendency-wit has access to other sources of pleasure than harmless wit, in which all the pleasure is somehow dependent upon the technique. We can also reiterate that owing to our feelings we are in no position to distinguish in tendency-wit what part of the pleasure originates from the technique and what part from the tendency. Strictly speaking, we do not know what we are laughing about. In all obscene jokes we succumb to striking mistakes of judgment about the “goodness” of the joke as far as it depends upon formal conditions; the technique of these jokes is often very poor while their laughing effect is enormous. Invectives Made Possible Through Wit We next wish to determine whether the rôle of wit in the service of the hostile tendency is the same. Right from the start we meet with similar conditions.