Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/370

 conditions of which one may be designated as the “isolation” of the comic case. A closer analysis renders conspicuous relations something like the following:

a) The favorable condition for the origin of comic pleasure is brought about by a general happy disposition in which “one is in the mood for laughing.” In happy toxic states almost everything seems comic, which probably results from a comparison with the expenditure in normal conditions. For wit, the comic, and all similar methods of gaining pleasure from the psychic activities, are nothing but ways to regain this happy state—euphoria—from one single point, when it does not exist as a general disposition of the psyche.

b) A similar favorable condition is produced by the expectation of the comic or by putting one’s self in the right mood for comic pleasure. Hence when the intention to make things comical exists and when this feeling is shared by others, the differences required are so slight that they probably would have been overlooked had they been experienced in unpremeditated occurrences. He who decides to attend a comic lecture or a farce at the theater is indebted to this intention for laughing over things which in his everyday life would hardly produce in him a comic effect. He finally laughs