XVI

LAUGHTER1

(1913)

THE pleasure and unpleasure mechanism of laughter: a repetition of the pleasure and unpleasure in being born.

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Bergson (p. 26): 2 Bergson recognizes, not laughing, but only laughing at.

Bergson: The laughter laughs at what is dead (the mechanical).

Bergson: Because he is disgusted by it.

Ferenczi: Because he longs for it (cliché).

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Bergson (p. 27): Why is the mechanical funny? The idea of doing something automatically without any effort of thought is pleasurable (flatters one’s laziness). For example: directing a crowd with a button. The magic of omnipotence. Omnipotence of behaviour or words. The army.

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Predetermination. Automatism just as valid for the tragic as for the comic.

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On Bergson (p. 32): Main argument against Bergson.

Bergson: ‘Rigidity, which is out of harmony with the immanent plasticity of life, provokes laughter’, ‘the mechanical that goes behind life provokes laughter’. (To frighten us away from the rigid, the dead, etc.). He never speaks of the reason for laughter, but only about its purpose.

If the aim of the affect were the maintenance of order, what sense would there be in the feeling of pleasure which accompanies the affect? The sight of disorder should cause us to weep, mourn, be angry.

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Bergson’s social theory applies only to laughing at, not to laughing.

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There are two things to be considered: (i) laughing in itself; (ii) laughing at. The essence of laughing: How much I should like to be as imperfect as that! The essence of laughing at: How satisfactory it is that I am so well behaved, not so imperfect as that!

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Making a virtue of necessity:

 (i)How difficult it is to be perfect, says the child who is being brought up to be orderly.
(ii)How pleasing it is to be perfect, says the child who has been brought up to be orderly.

Thus in the first place the child can only laugh (be glad) at orderliness.

The conscious attitude of the adult at the sight of disorder is: I am glad that I am not so. Unconsciously he enjoys the fantasy: How satisfactory it is to be so disorderly. Behind every laughing at there is concealed unconscious laughing.

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On p. 8) Laughter and feeling of guilt.

  (i)The feeling of the comic is always a break-through of pleasure at an a-social (sinful) impulse, upon a temporary break-through of the sense of sin by which mankind is continually burdened. (Connexion with the totem sin.)
 (ii)Sin only enjoyable in groups. Mutual forgiveness.
(iii)Where security is lacking (the presence of strangers) there is embarrassment, and it is impossible to join in the laughter. The communion of the guilty is lacking.

Anxiety.

 (i)He who forgives a sin really commits it too.
(ii)He who loves someone shares all the latter’s sins and forgives them. (The communion of accomplices.)

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Happiness. Smiling (the child after being quieted; absence of all needs).

Laughter=defence against excessive pleasure.

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What takes place in laughter:

  (i)Break-through of feeling of pleasure.
 (ii)Defensive measures against this feeling of pleasure (attempt at regression).
(iii)What gives rise to the defence is the same (original) sense of guilt, the conscience.

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An individual who does not join in the laughter (a stranger) does not permit the feeling of pleasure to arise and therefore does not need the defence.

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Laughter is an automatic intoxication with CO2 (tissue suffocation).

Weeping is an automatic inhalation of O2.

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Laughter and the comic are yet another result of the censorship.

Laughter is a general physiological defence against discomfort-causing pleasure. A completely bad man prevents the release of pleasure and remains serious. If a consciously moral person releases unconscious pleasure, his ego defends itself by means of laughter against the advancing pleasure (a counter-poison).

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Laughter is a failure of repression. A defence symptom against unconscious pleasure.

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Remaining serious is successful repression.

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A simply bad man gives rein to his pleasure at the comic (the unseemly, the incongruous) in others without defence (therefore does not laugh, forms no counter-poison to his pleasure).

An individual whose badness is incompletely repressed always starts laughing when incongruousness in others awakens pleasure in him.

A completely moral person laughs no more than a completely immoral one. The release of pleasure is lacking.

Thus a bad person does not laugh, because he simply enjoys his badness (pleasure) without defence (without pleasure).

The good man does not laugh because his pleasure is well repressed—it does not come out, and therefore laughter is superfluous.

The ambivalent individual whose badness is incompletely repressed can laugh. Conflict between the conscience (morality) and pleasure in the bad; the badness makes the pleasure, conscience the laughter.

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Freud: In laughing we feel ourselves into the physical condition of the comic and get rid of the superfluous provision of affect by means of laughter.

I suggest that laughter consists of:

 (i)discharge of physical energy in Freud’s sense;
(ii)compensation for this discharge by the respiratory muscles’ becoming the site of the discharge. (And the face muscles (?).)

Laughter is apparently a derivative of general muscle clonuses (and tonuses) which have become available for special purposes (aims). Just as expressive gestures arose from general reactions (cramps).

The respiratory muscular system is thus appropriate to the expression of emotion because it permits (i) abreaction, as well as (ii) different shades of feeling and delicate gradations of inhibition.

The face muscles are similarly adapted to the discharge of more delicate quantities of affect and at the same time to the regulation of breathing by the expansion and constriction of the openings of the nose and mouth (expansion=more pleasure breathed out. In weeping, snivelling movements).

Probably all expressive movements consist of an active and a reactive component (compensation)?

  (i)More inhibition than explosion.
 (ii)More explosion than inhibition.
(iii)Equilibrium, with a slight predominance of one or the other.

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Analogy between laughter and vomiting. Laughter is the vomiting of breath (oxygen) from the lungs. Weeping is the drinking in of air. Breathing is accentuated in maniacs, inhibited in melancholics.

Gross’s mechanism of mania. Analogy between alcoholic and oxygen consumption.

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Why does the cheerful man need to drink wine (or oxygen)? Is it needed only when one is sad?

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One can laugh only at oneself. (One can only love oneself!) (Pleasure=love; conscious (irony) or unconscious (comic, jokes).

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Mother, can you order me to do anything? Of course! No, you can order me to do only what I order myself (Freud).

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The comic and laughter.

We are always delighted by the naïve (the childish) element in the comic and it rouses the unconscious child in us (the pleasure factor in laughter). At the same time our conscious ideal is stimulated and sees to it that the pleasure does not become excessive (defence, expiration).

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(Modification of Freud’s definition.)

The effect of the comic consists of: (i) laughter; (ii) laughing at (secondary, cultural product, Bergson).

Why must I emphasize that I am not like that? Because I am like that!

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Forms of laughter deduced theoretically:

 (i)The more laughing at, the more expiration;
(ii)The more laughing, the less expiration (and the more muscle abreaction).

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After much laughter, dejection (post coitum triste).

Laughter and coitus break through guilt feeling.

Difference between man and woman: man triste, woman not triste. (Cf. religion!) Woman would be easy to enlighten (enlightened). Religiousness not deep.

1 Posthumous paper. First published in German: Bausteine IV (1939). First English translation.

2 Editor’s Note.—The page numbers refer to the Hungarian edition of Bergson’s Le Rire, Budapest, 1913.