Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/257

 inner, unsurmountable inhibitions in the first person were in the way of the same. Thus one gets the full impression of the absolute necessity of this third person for the completion of the wit-process. But while we have succeeded in obtaining a good insight concerning the nature of this process in the third person, we feel that the corresponding process in the first person is still shrouded in darkness. So far we have not succeeded in answering the first of our two questions: Why can we not laugh over wit made by ourselves? and: Why are we urged to impart our own witticisms to others? We can only suspect that there is an intimate connection between the two facts yet to be explained, and that we must impart our witticisms to others for the reason that we ourselves are unable to laugh over them. From our examinations of the conditions in the third person for pleasure gaining and pleasure discharging we can draw the conclusion that in the first person the conditions for discharge are lacking and that those for gaining pleasure are only incompletely fulfilled. Thus it is not to be disputed that we enhance our pleasure in that we attain the—to us impossible—laughter in this roundabout way from the impression of the person who was stimulated to laughter. Thus we laugh, so to speak, par ricochet,