Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/292



Irony—Negativism

Among those techniques which are common to both wit and dreams representation through the opposite and the application of absurdity are especially interesting. The first belongs to the strongly effective means of wit as shown in the examples of “out-doing wit” (p. 98). The representation through the opposite, unlike most of the wit-techniques, is unable to withdraw itself from conscious attention. He who intentionally tries to make use of wit-work, as in the case of the “habitual wit,” soon discovers that the easiest way to answer an assertion with a witticism is to concentrate one’s mind on the opposite of this assertion and trust to the chance flash of thought to brush aside the feared objection to this opposite by means of a different interpretation. Maybe the representation through its opposite is indebted for such a preference to the fact that it forms the nucleus of another pleasurable mode of mental expression, for an understanding of which we do not have to consult the unconscious. I refer to irony, which is very similar to wit and is considered a sub-species of the comic. The essence of irony consists in imparting the very opposite of what one intended to express, but it precludes the anticipated contradiction