Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/48

 this case, as in the other, we deal with a similar psychic process which is recognizable by identical results. Such a far-reaching analogy between wit-technique and dream-work will surely arouse our interest in the former and stimulate our expectation of finding some explanation of wit from a comparison with the dream. We forbear, however, to enter upon this work by bearing in mind that we have investigated the technique of wit in only a very small number of witty jests, so that we cannot be certain that the analogy, the workings of which we wish to explore, will hold good. Hence we turn away from the comparison with the dream and again take up the technique of wit, leaving, however, at this place of our investigation a visible thread, as it were, which later we shall take up again.

Wit Formed by Word-division

The next point we shall discuss is whether the process of condensation with substitutive formation is demonstrable in all witticisms so that it may be designated as a universal character of the technique of wit. I recall a joke which has clung to my mind through certain peculiar circumstances. One of the great teachers of my youth, whom we considered unable to appreciate a