Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/198

 in words of the same or of similar sounds, which is a source of great amusement to adults. If we experience in wit an unmistakable pleasure because through the use of the same or similar words we reach from one set of ideas to a distant other one, (as in “Home-Roulard” from the kitchen to politics), we can justly refer this pleasure to the economy of psychic expenditure. The pleasure of the wit resulting from such a “short-circuit” appears greater the more remote and foreign the two series of ideas which become related through the same word are to each other, or the greater the economy in thought brought about by the technical means of wit. We may add that in this case wit makes use of a means of connection which is rejected by and carefully avoided in serious thinking. If I may be permitted to anticipate what later is discussed in the text I can here throw some light upon the condition which seems to be authoritative in the usage of language when it is a question of calling a joke “good” or “poor.” If by means of a double meaning or slightly modified word I have gotten from one idea to another by a short route, and if this does not also simultaneously result in senseful association between the two ideas, then I have made a “poor” joke. In this poor joke one word or the “point” forms the only existing association between the two widely separated ideas. The joke “Home-Roulard” used above is such an example. But a “good” joke results if the infantile expectation is right in the end and if with the similarity of the word another essential similarity in meaning is really simultaneously produced—as In the examples Traduttore—Traditore (translator—traitor), and Amantes—Amentes (lovers—