Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/66

 without substitutive formation. Condensation thus remains as the chief category. A compressing or—to be more exact—an economic tendency controls all these techniques. As Prince Hamlet says: “Thrift, Horatio, thrift.” It seems to be all a matter of economy.

Let us examine this economy in individual cases. “C’est le premier vol de l’aigle.” That is, the first flight of the eagle. Certainly, but it is a depredatious flight. Luckily for the gist of this joke “vol” signifies flight as well as depredation. Has nothing been condensed and economized by this? Certainly, the entire second thought, and it was dropped without any substitution. The double sense of the word “vol” makes such substitution superfluous, or what is just as correct: The word “vol” contains the substitution for the repressed thought without the necessity of supplementing or varying the first sentence. Therein consists the benefit of the double meaning.

Another example: Gold mine,—gold spoon, the enormous economy of expression the single word “gold” produces. It really tells the history of two generations in the life of some American families. The father made his fortune through hard toiling in the gold fields during the early pioneer days. The son was born with a golden spoon in his mouth; having been brought