Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/278

 be carried over to the wit-formation. The regression of the stream of thought to perception certainly falls away as far as wit is concerned. However, the other two stages of dream-formation, the sinking of a foreconscious thought into the unconscious, and the unconscious elaboration, would give us exactly the result which we might observe in wit if we assumed this process in wit-formation. Let us decide to assume that this is the proceeding of wit-formation in the case of the first person. A foreconscious thought is left for a moment to unconscious elaboration and the results are forthwith grasped by the conscious perception.

Before, however, we attempt to prove the details of this assertion we wish to consider an objection which may jeopardize our assumption. We start with the fact that the techniques of wit point to the same processes which become known to us as peculiarities of dream-work. Now it is an easy matter to say in opposition that we would not have described the techniques of wit as condensation, displacement, etc., nor would we have arrived at such a comprehensive agreement in the means of representation of wit and dreams, if our previous knowledge of dream-work had not influenced our conception of the technique of wit; so that at