Economics As A Laughing Matter Freud S Jokes and Their Relation To The Economic and Rhetorical Unconscious

The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory
ISSN: 0016-8890 (Print) 1930-6962 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vger20
Economics as a Laughing Matter: Freud's Jokes

and Their Relation to the Economic and Rhetorical
Unconscious
Richard T. Gray
To cite this article: Richard T. Gray (2013) Economics as a Laughing Matter: Freud's Jokes and
Their Relation to the Economic and Rhetorical Unconscious, The Germanic Review: Literature,
Culture, Theory, 88:2, 97-120, DOI: 10.1080/00168890.2013.784116
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00168890.2013.784116
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Date: 12 September 2016, At: 02:45
The Germanic Review, 88: 97120, 2013

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ISSN: 0016-8890 print / 1930-6962 online
DOI: 10.1080/00168890.2013.784116
Economics as a Laughing Matter: Freuds

Jokes and Their Relation to the Economic
and Rhetorical Unconscious
Richard T. Gray
Freuds Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious can be read as a fundamental
economic and rhetorical treatise on a number of different levels. Viewed most basically,
this work outlines the economizing mechanisms that Freud believes are at work in all
unconscious psychic operations. In this regard, Jokes focuses on the third dimension Freud
associated with his general metapsychological project, the first two being the topological
and the dynamic aspects of psychic life. But on a more profound level, economic thought,
structures, and metaphors invade Freuds text in its very rhetoric and discursive structure.
However, the parallels between the economics and the rhetoric of this work do not end
here. Jokes assume a privileged status in Freuds theory because, as acts of interhuman
communicative transfer, they demonstrate that certain psychic structures not only operate
unconsciously, but can also be consciously manipulated to achieve strategic psychological
effects and affects in others. Jokes thereby manifest the social and rhetorical dimensions
of precisely those economic principles by which they function. Ultimately, these very
same joke mechanismsdeferral, displacement, repetition, anticipatory tensioninform
the rhetoric and argumentative structure of this very treatise. Just as the joke-teller invests
inordinate intellectual energy in the joke just so that he or she will receive a residual
pleasure through the laughter of the joke-audience, Freud as author of this treatise deploys
joke-mechanisms to win over his own readers in an effort to gain currency for himself as
scientist, and for the project of psychoanalysis more generally.
Keywords: communicative transfer, economic thought, Freud, Jokes and their Relation
to the Unconscious, psychoanalysis, the unconscious
Geld ist Lachgas fur mich.

[Money is laughing gas for me.]1
1
Sigmund Freud, in a letter to Wilhelm Flie from September 21, 1899. See Freud, Briefe an Wilhelm
Flie 18871904, ed. Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason and Michael Schroter (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer,
97
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VOLUME 88, NUMBER 2 / 2013
n the span of a mere five years, from 1900 to 1905, Sigmund Freud published three major
works that rank as the founding documents of psychoanalytic theory: Die Traumdeutung
(The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900), Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens (On the Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1901), and Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewuten
(Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, 1905).2 Of course, Freud wrote and published
several other important works during this period, including Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie (Three Essays on Sexuality, 1905) and the infamous Dora case study, Bruchstuck einer
Hysterie-Analyse (Fragment of a Case of Hysteria, 1905). However, the three first-named
treatises arguably constitute the fundamental and stable building blocks for Freuds theory
of the psyche and its operation.3 It is well known that Freud never ceased to consider Die
Traumdeutung as a path-breaking book that laid out the blueprint for psychoanalytic study,
and he symbolically codified its revolutionary status when he assigned the bookwhich actually appeared in November 1899the publication date of 1900, thereby ensuring that it would
be the inaugural publication of a new, psychoanalytic century.4 This works significance
resides in its identification and functional description of the principal operations underlying
1986), hereafter cited in the text as Briefe with page number; here, 411; and Complete Letters of
Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 18871904, ed. and trans. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (Cambridge,
MA: Belknap/Harvard, 1985), hereafter cited in the text as Complete Letters with page number; here,
374.
2
Hereafter, Freuds works are cited in the text parenthetically according to the standard editions and
their common abbreviations, GW designating the Gesammelte Werke, and SE the English Standard
Edition, each followed by volume and page number. For these collections, see Gesammelte Werke:
Chronologisch geordnet, ed. Anna Freud et al., 17 vols. (London: Imago, 194068); and The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey, 24
vols. (London: Hogarth, 195374). Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewuten and its English
translation are quoted from these editions, but are cited as Witz and Jokes respectively. See Sigmund
Freud, Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewuten. Vol. 6 of Gesammelte Werke, ed. Anna Freud
(London: Imago, 1940); and Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Vol. 8 of The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey (London:
Hogarth, 1960).
3
Freud perennially sought to resist any form of dogmatism, in the belief that it was detrimental to
the scientific nature of his enterprise; hence, he left his theory open to revisions in certain respects.
Thus in 1920, when, in Jenseits des Lustprinzips (Beyond the Pleasure Principle), he abandons the
sole dominance of the pleasure principle in the primary process and admits the death drive as a second
primary instinct, he justifies this by contrasting the malleability of science with the doctrinaire fanaticism of religion: Nur solche Glaubige, die von der Wissenschaft einen Ersatz fur den aufgegebenen
Katechismus fordern, werden dem Forscher die Fortbildung oder selbst die Umbildung seiner Ansichten
verubeln [Only believers, who demand that science shall be a substitute for the catechism they have
given up, will blame an investigator for developing or even transforming his views] (GW 13: 69; SE 18:
64). Despite such openness to emendation, certain grounding principles remain astonishingly constant
throughout the developmental history of psychoanalysis, and these principles are largely articulated
in the three foundational works named here. If anything, these stable positions are supplemented and
refined as Freuds theory matures.
4
On publication date of Traumdeutung and its significance for Freuds self-understanding, see Peter
Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time (New York: Norton, 1988), 3.
GRAY
ECONOMICS AS A LAUGHING MATTER
99
the unconscious as a dominant force of the human psyche: association, condensation, displacement, scenic representation, and so forth. The two theoretical works that follow pick up
on these primary mechanisms and attempt to document their operation in further dimensions
of human psychic life. Extending the structural mechanisms of dreams to additional psychological spheres allowed Freud to generalize them as universal psychic laws, and thereby
buttress the theoretical positions first articulated in his dream theory. In this regard, Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens served the important end of demonstrating that those operations Freud had first analyzed in the unconscious world of dreams were also at work in waking
life, and expressed themselves in typical errors and parapraxes, the infamous Freudian slips.
These parapraxes proved, according to Freud, that the mechanisms of the dream-work were
not isolated to the state of sleep, but could be generalized as principles of the unconscious that
were instrumental in all aspects of the psychic life of the individual (GW 4: 30809; SE 6:
27778). Witz adds several new components intended to lend weight to the psychic omnipresence of these functions: it demonstrates, first, that they not only operate unconsciously, but
that they can be consciously manipulated and controlled to achieve certain psychic effects;
and it provides evidence, second, that these mechanisms are not confined to the intra-psychic
dynamic of a single individual, but that they are transferable between individuals in a process
of communicative exchange. Witz thereby lends a significant social dimension to Freudian
theory,5 whereby the universality of these underlying psychic principles, which all human
beings purportedly share, becomes the condition of possibility for this moment of communicative transfer. As examples of how individuals use language as a medium of exchanging
and acquiring increments of pleasure, jokes become paradigms for the psychological investments operative in all forms of human cultural exchange, including literature and art.
Freud periodically discussed the question of what he liked to call metapsychology,
by which he meant the minimal set of assumptions upon which psychoanalytic theory rests.6
He commonly divided this metapsychological substructure into three broad categories, which
he designated as the topological, the dynamic, and the economic. Topology refers to the basic
idea that the psyche can be divided into distinct areas, such as the ego and the id, or the
conscious and the unconscious mind, and that each domain operates according to its own
discrete principles. The dynamic dimension indicates that, despite this discreteness, there is
an interface at which traffic or psychic energy flows between these topological realms. The
economic viewpoint, which Freud understands as the necessary supplement to these first
5
The Marxist critic V. N. Volosinov emphasizes, not surprisingly, that Freuds joke theory not only
permits the individual to bypass social prohibitions, but that it socializes this transgression by turning
the jokes audience into accomplices. See V. N. Volosinov, Freudianism: A Critical Sketch, trans. I.
R. Titunik, ed. Neal H. Bruss (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 59. Freud devotes an
entire section of his Witz theory to a description of the individual motivations on the part of the joker
and the social process of communication with an audience (Witz 15677; Jokes 14058). Carl Hill
emphasizes the extent to which this social dimension of Freuds jokes rely on the shared cultural and
sociopolitical heritage of their principal practitioners, an educated European bourgeoisie. See Carl Hill,
The Economics of Witz. The Soul of Wit: Joke Theory from Grimm to Freud (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1993), 91128; here, 91, 96.
6
See David Rappaport and Merton M. Gill, The Points of View and Assumptions of Metapsychology.
International Journal of Psychoanalysis 40 (1959): 15362; here, 153.
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two,7 dictates that the overriding inclination of the psychic system as a whole is toward
equilibrium or a state of inertia. The psyche practices, according to Freud, a form of doubleentry bookkeeping in which accounts must always balance each other out, so that any excess
accumulation of psychic energy demands expenditure,8 and any deficit requires further
accumulation.9
Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewuten is the work in which Freud most
explicitly elaborates and describes this process of psychic bookkeeping.10 He refers here to
the psychischer Aufwand, the expenditure of psychic energy, that is required in order to
effect the inhibition or damming up of any instinctual impulse. The pleasure we derive from
certain jokes, he explains, is directly proportionate to the energy necessary to institute the
psychic blockage that the joke is intended to circumvent, so that, as he concludes, we can
suppose that this yield of pleasure corresponds to the psychical expenditure that is saved
(Witz 133; Jokes 118). In other words, the amount of energy that is saved because the joke
has made the inhibiting investment superfluous must find some other outlet, which results in
its expressionliterally, ex-pressionas the pleasure of laughter. In order to keep the psychic
ledger in balance, energy that remains unexpended for one purpose must be spent somewhere
else. However, this is but one of two distinct avenues by which, according to Freud, jokes
have the capacity to produce pleasure; in addition to this relaxation of an already invested
psychic energy, pleasure is generated when an anticipated psychic expenditure is recognized
as superfluous and hence can be kept in reserve. Relief from psychical expenditure that
is already there and economizing in psychical expenditure that is only about to be called
forfrom these two principles all the techniques of jokes, and accordingly all pleasure from
these techniques, are derived (Witz 143; Jokes 127).11 In both instances, the principle of
economizing in the psychic household is responsible for an accrual of pleasure.
7
Freud raises the idea that the economic aspect is a requisite supplement to the topological and
dynamic dimensions in the 1915 essay Das Unbewute (The Unconscious; GW 10: 28081; SE 14:
181), and broaches it once again in Jenseits des Lustprinzips (Beyond the Pleasure Principle) of 1920.
In the latter treatise he remarks: Wir meinen, eine Darstellung, die neben dem topischen und dem
dynamischen Moment noch dies o konomische zu wurdigen versuche, sei die vollstandigste, die wir uns
derzeit vorstellen konnen, und verdiene es, durch den Namen einer metapsychologischen hervorgehoben
zu werden [[I]f [ . . . ] we try to estimate this economic factor in addition to the topographical and
dynamic ones, we shall, I think, be giving the most complete description of them of which we can at
present conceive, and one which deserves to be distinguished by the term metapsychological] (GW
13: 3; SE 18: 7).
8
See Franz Alexander, Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis (New York: Norton, 1948), 39.
9
For a detailed description of these three dimensions of metapsychology, see Rappaport and Gill
(15456); and also Frank J. Sulloway, Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend
(New York: Basic Books, 1979), 6265.
10
Mark Weeks stresses the manner in which what he calls Freuds joke factory requires the constant
oversight of an accountant or financial manager. See Mark Weeks, Freud and the Economics of
Laughter. Genbunronshu 28, no. 2 (2007): 22739; here, 235.
11
Erleichterung des schon bestehenden und Ersparung an erst aufzubietendem psychischen Aufwand,
auf diese beiden Prinzipien fuhrt sich also alle Technik des Witzes und somit alle Lust aus diesen
Techniken zuruck.
GRAY
101
In the 1911 essay, Formulierungen u ber die zwei Prinzipien des psychischen
Geschehens (Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning), Freud identifies
this inclination toward psychic parsimony as [a] general tendency of our mental apparatus,
which can be traced back to the economic principle of saving expenditure (GW 8: 234;
SE 12: 222).12 Jokes thus represent a specific manifestation of this general economic law
thought to govern psychic functioning. However, it would be wrong to associate this insistence on energy saving with a capitalist ideology that emphasizes accumulation. On the
contrary, for Freud, the economics of the psyche works in such a way that any build-up of
energy, or any increased investment of tension, is identified with displeasure, whereas the
reduction of energy, either by means of initial non-investment, or through abandonment of
already effected investments, is linked with the generation of pleasure.13 Freud articulated
this principle as early as the 1895 Entwurf einer Psychologie (Project for a Scientific
Psychology), an early comprehensive outline of his theory of the psyche that he developed
in written correspondence with his friend and colleague Wilhelm Fliess.14 In these sketches,
Freud noted that displeasure amounts to an elevation in the quantity of psychic stimulus and
pleasure to its purging or dispersal (Entwurf 404; SE 1: 312). According to this theory, the
ideal condition of the psyche is a return to the state of non-stimulation, a situation identified
in this early work as the Idealzustand der Tragheit [ideal state of inertia] (Entwurf
431; SE 1: 336).15 Jokes and laughter serve this economic psychic need by creating avenues
for reducing tension and minimizing the energy investments made by the psyche.
Scholars have commonly acknowledged this specifically economic aspect of Freuds
theory of wit and humor, and have frequently associated it with the bourgeois ideology of
late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Europe.16 Lawrence Birken, in particular, has
argued the affinity between Freuds economic thinking and the conceptions of marginalist
economists, who emphasize the factors of desire and consumption under the general conditions of scarcity.17 Yet one might go further and insist that the economic arguments so
12
Eine allgemeine Tendenz unseres seelischen Apparats, die man auf das o konomische Prinzip der
Aufwandersparnis zuruckfuhren kann.
13
Lawrence Birken hence argues that not only Freud, but sexologists of this era more generally, oriented
their theories toward notions of consumption and disaccumulation. See Lawrence Birken, Consuming
Desire: Sexual Science and the Emergence of a Culture of Abundance from 18711914 (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1988), 6768.
14
See Freud, Entwurf einer Psychologie. Nachtragsband: Texte aus den Jahren 18851938, ed.
Angela Richards. Supplemental volume to Gesammelte Werke, ed. Anna Freud et al. (Frankfurt am
Main: Fischer, 1987), 373486; hereafter cited in the text as Entwurf with page number.
15
In Jenseits des Lustprinzips (Beyond the Pleasure Principle), Freud would identify this return to
an originary state of lifelessness with one of the principal psychic drives, the death instinct, which he
interpreted as a return to the stasis of pre-life (GW 13: 40; SE 18: 38).
16
See Hill 1034; Weeks 232; and Volosinov 60.
17
See Lawrence Birken, Freuds Economic Hypothesis: From Homo Oeconomicus to Homo Sexualis. American Imago 56, no. 4 (1999): 31130; here, 318; and Birken, Consuming Desire 4046.
For an examination of the ways in which Freuds psychic economy resembles more specifically the
economic principles of the Austrian marginalist economist, Carl Menger, who was Freuds approximate contemporary, see Richard T. Gray, Accounting for Pleasure: Sigmund Freud, Carl Menger, and
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prominent in Der Witz und seine Beiehung zum Unbewuten serve the deeper theoretical purpose of delineating and fleshing out precisely those metapsychological reflexes that Freud
liked to categorize as economic. He had noted as early as September 1899, in a letter to
Fliess, [d]er scheinbare Witz, or the ostensible wit, of all unconscious psychic processes,
which already suggested for him their connection to the theory of the joke and the comic
(Briefe 407; Complete Letters 371). Freuds joke book, as its title clearly indicates, represents the attempt to codify these deeper affinities between the economy of jokes and the
economic aspects of unconscious operations more generally, and, in this sense, it represents
Freuds pivotal economic treatise. Already in its introductory pages, Freud justifies devoting
so much time and energy to a seemingly minor psychic phenomenon such as wit by citing
the inestimable value such a study can have for our knowledge of other aspects of psychic
life (Witz 13; Jokes 15, trans. modified). Moreover, this defense of a treatise that will argue
the economic expedience of wit is itself couched in the language of economic advantage:
Freuds expenditure of intellectual energy is legitimated by the promise of a value-added
payout in knowledge, and it is striking that the logic of this justification exactly parallels
the economic logic he ascribes to jokes and wit. Freud is most explicit about this ability
to extrapolate from the mechanisms of jokes to more general unconscious operations in the
section of this work treating the relationships between the joke-work and the dream-work
(Witz 9596, 201; Jokes 8889, 176). Here, too, the added value that accrues from identifying
the unconscious as the origin of the joke-work dispels any lingering doubts about the value
of this investigation, since it decidedly renders it wertvoller [more valuable] (Witz 201;
Jokes 176; trans. modified.).
If we can identify the joke book as Freuds most concerted attempt to delineate the
economic dimension of his metapsychological program, we might then consider the other
two primary theoretical volumes Freud published in the opening half-decade of the twentieth
century as devoted to the other two fundamental principles of metapsychology. In this configuration, Die Traumdeutung could be understood as focusing predominantly on the topological
dimension, insofar as it stresses the independent operation of the unconscious and the distinct
principles by which it functions. It is here, after all, that Freud most clearly marks out the
boundaries that separate the unconscious workings of the psychic apparatus from the rational
operations of our conscious life. Similarly, Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens is concerned
largely with the dynamic interface between the unconscious and the conscious mind, to the
extent that it highlights the crossovers where unconscious thoughts erupt unpredictably into
everyday conscious life. Even the order in which these three publications appeared lines up
with the order in which Freud consistently named the three categories of metapsychology:
the topological, the dynamic, and the economic. It would be an overstatement, to be sure,
to maintain that each of these works is devoted exclusively to a single metapsychological
principle; but in terms of the developmental logic of Freuds psychoanalytic project in general, it makes sense that each of these foundational treatises privileges one aspect of the
larger metapsychological theory, so that when written (and read) in succession, they afford
a comprehensive outlook that elucidates each fundamental facet of metapsychology. This
the Economically Minded Individual. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
(PMLA) 127 (2012): 12230.
GRAY
103
triumvirate of formative works would thus correspond with the tripartite division of Freuds
metapsychological project more generally.
Yet Freuds Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewuten is an economic treatise
in a more profound sense, insofar as it accomplishes much more than simply explaining the
unconscious mechanisms of jokes and the physiology of laughter in terms of economic
principles. We have already witnessed, for example, how the economic interests that concern
Freud on the level of psychological theory also pervade the language and rhetoric in which
he formulates these ideas. Not only is this work rife with terms such as expenditure, profit in
pleasure, economizing tendencies, the labor of joke-making, trafficking, pleasure-payouts,
investments, and cost effectiveness, but economic terminology and allusions even infect
Freuds discourse on the level of metaphor. Puns, for example, that take the least effort
to create, are considered am billigsten [cheapest] (Witz 46; Jokes 45). Witty repartee,
in which the objects of humorous critique defend themselves by turning the barb against
the initial perpetrator, amounts to Bezahlen mit gleicher Munze [paying someone back
in his own coin] (Witz 72; Jokes 68). The value of jokes is like the value of currencies,
and those with continued worth remain im Umlauf [in circulation], whereas those
whose effectiveness wanes are slowly drawn out of circulation (Witz 138, 19091; Jokes
123, 167). The dynamic of lewd jokes, as Freud elucidates, is especially complex in that it
requires three individuals, one who tells the joke, a second who is the object of its erotic
implication, and a third in whom it invokes solidarity with the joke-teller and generates
laughter. Freud identifies the circulation of emotions among these parties as a kind of
commercial transaction, what he dubs a Zotenverkehr, a smutty interchange (Witz 109;
Jokes 100), or more literally, a kind of trafficking in lewdness, in which two parties enjoy a
libidinal profit at the expense of a third. Certain jokes, moreover, employ the clever strategy
of using a small dose of pleasure generated by the joke technique as a trigger to release a
greater amount of pleasure otherwise subject to psychic blockage. This meager investment
that produces an incrementally higher payout is identified with the marketing strategy of a
Verlockungspramie, an incentive bonus (Witz 153; Jokes 13637). Economic thinking,
as these examples demonstrate, permeates Freuds treatise down to the principal levels of
rhetoric and discourse, just as much as it dominates its theoretical argument.
Freuds joke book is haunted by economic references in other domains as well. One of
the most obvious of these is the one thatperhaps precisely because of its obviousnesshas
received the least critical attention: the overwhelming dominance of economic and financial
themes in Freuds sample jokes. Freud is known to have taken personal interest in collecting
specifically Jewish jokes, and this genre is well represented by two sample groups, those that
revolve around the Schadchen, or marriage broker, and those that deal with the Schnorrer,
the beggar who turns to a wealthy householder for charity and invariably wastes any alms on
frivolous pleasures.18 Yet both of these sub-classes clearly depend on underlying economic
discrepancies as the basis of their humorous potential. The marriage broker is presented as a
18
Elliot Oring has provided exemplary analyses of the Jewish aspects of Freuds jokes, especially of
the Schnorrer-figure, with whom Oring believes Freud unconsciously identified. See in particular Elliot
Oring, Freud and Humor: Analytic Reflections. Jokes and Their Relations (Lexington, KY: University
Press of Kentucky, 1992), 94111; and the chapters on The Schnorrer and The Schadchen in Elliot
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marketing mogul who uses all possible tricks and deceptions to cast the potential bride in the
most favorable light. In these jokes, any objections brought forward by the customerthe
male negotiating for a partnerare systematically turned away. In his description of how
such jokes operate, Freud makes use of language that highlights matters of economics and
quantification: The broker behaved as though each separate defect was got rid of by his
evasions, whereas in fact each one of them left a certain amount of depreciation behind
which had to be added to the next one (Witz 65; Jokes 62).19 Already the reference to
the Schadchen as a Vermittler, a broker or intermediary, suggests his economic role as
a tradesman or dealer. His resistance to the systematic depreciation of the object he
offers in trade is consistent with his motivation to exchange it at the highest price, but it is
predicated on a refusal to acknowledge a simple rule of mathematics: that a large number of
small defects ultimately add up to one enormous deficiency. This is revealed by the punchline of the joke: the womans ultimate failing is the physical deformity of a severe hunchback.
Classified under a category of jokes that display faulty reasoning or deviations from normal
thought processes, such examples actually betray the manner in which such discrepancies in
reasoning are driven by economic considerations: the marriage broker is more than willing
to annul or ignore the laws of reason if this will allow him to seal a profitable commercial
transaction.
The Schnorrer jokes similarly represent examples of faulty reasoning that have their
basis in an offence against ruling economic logic. In a classic example, an impoverished Jew
appeals for money to a wealthy acquaintance by painting a vivid picture of his dire financial
straits; yet after being given a sum of money, the benefactor discovers the beggar enjoying
a meal of salmon with mayonnaise. When accused of wasting this gift on an unnecessary
luxury, the beggar counters by asking: when, if not when in the possession of money, he
might be able to enjoy salmon with mayonnaise? Freud analyzes the joke as an instance in
which the semblance of logic is used to justify an action that is fundamentally illogical: those
who are impoverished should not waste their minimal and, moreover, borrowed resources
on wanton pleasures (Witz 51; Jokes 4950).20 However, this example can also be interpreted
as a metajoke that reflects in its own structure the unconscious mechanism Freud attributes
to jokes more generally: the Schnorrer has done nothing other than exploit someone elses
monetary investment to leverage a significant payout in personal pleasure, which is precisely
how Freud describes the social dynamic at work between joke-tellers and their audience (Witz
16768; Jokes 14950).21 Thus, what appears on the surface to be a deviation from normal
reasoning actually confirms the instinctual economic impulses that Freud associates with
Oring, The Jokes of Sigmund Freud: A Study in Humor and Jewish Identity (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 1326, 2741.
19
Der Vermittler tut, als ob jeder einzelne Fehler durch seine Ausflucht beseitigt ware, wahrend doch
von jedem ein Stuck Entwertung erubrigt, das sich zum nachsten summiert.
20
Oring is correct, in my view, in highlighting the dynamic of indebtedness and its psychological
denial in this class of jokes (Freud and Humor 99), but we should not forget the overriding economic
logicgain in personal pleasurethat rules this dynamic.
21
Hill has pointed out the instance of another joke in Freuds repertoire that performs a similar function
as a metajoke by thematizing the conditions responsible for its own production (111).
GRAY
105
the unconscious psychic apparatus. The human being is, as Freud points out later in this
treatise, ein unermudlicher Lustsucher [a tireless pleasure-seeker] (Witz 142; Jokes
126), and this incessant drive for pleasure is underwritten by unconscious economics of
personal satisfaction capable of overturning even the most rigorous rational argumentation
and the strictest rules of logic. This, after all, is exactly what jokes demonstrate for Freud: that
the economizing tendencies of the psyche and the unconscious instincts ultimately hold
sway over all the investments in reasoning of which the conscious mind is capable. Freuds
jokes thereby indicate that the unconscious impulses that invade and disrupt our modes of
calculative planning are invariably economic in the sense in which Freud defined it: caught
in the tension between saving and economizing, on the one hand, and the exuberance of
wasteful expenditurelaughteron the other.22
One of the first problems Freud sets out to resolve in Witz is how one can adjudicate
the Tendenz zur Ersparnis [tendency to economy] that he diagnoses as the unifying
characteristic of all jokes with the yield of pleasurethe German word, Lustgewinn,
has stronger economic implications, suggesting a profit or an accrual of surplus valuethat
originates with the joke (Witz 45; Jokes 44). How, in other words, does saving give rise to
profit? This, of course, is the economic question par excellence. We should recall that Freud
leads up to this question by investigating the phenomenon of Verdichtung, condensation in
jokes. This process of compaction and density of significations represents one of the critical
points of overlap between jokes and dreams, of course, since it was in Die Traumdeutung
that Freud most thoroughly examined this mechanism and ascribed it to the workings of
the unconscious. In Witz, however, he lends this concept a new meaning by subordinating
it to his more general economic category of energy saving. Citing numerous jokes that
exemplify the technique of condensation, he concludes: Ja, in diesen Beispielen ist die
Verdichtung, also die Ersparnis, unverkennbar [Condensation, and therefore economy, is
indeed quite unmistakably present in these examples] (Witz 44; Jokes 43). Freud himself
uses the extremely economical form of simple syntactic apposition to link condensation
and economization, effectively substituting one for the other. But a displacement has also
occurred: Verdichtung, a word drawn from the realm of physics and related to the mass
of bodies, and a word, moreover, that contains allusions to the density of poetry and
art via its root noun Dichtung (poetry), has been dislocated completely to the semantic
domain of economics: condensation is nothing other than a subcategory of economical
saving. It is also worth noting that the joke that immediately invokes these deliberations
thematically raises the issue of how thrift, rigorous economic reasoning, and sociopolitical
distinction are interrelated. It is one of the most remarkably laconic jokes in Freuds entire
collection: Eiserne Stirneeiserne Kasseeiserne Krone [Iron foreheadiron cashboxIron Crown] (Witz 44; Jokes 43, trans. modified.). In his analysis, Freud notes how the
effect of the joke depends on the repetition of the adjective eisern and the auerordentliche
Ersparnis [extraordinary saving] this word encapsulates (ibid.). But he might also have
pointed out that the repetition of this adjective is itself a counter-tendency to this saving,
22
Weeks is thus correct to associate Freuds theory of laughter with George Batailles notion of pleasure
as wanton expenditure (238). Samuel Weber also makes a related point; see Samuel Weber, Laughing
in the Meanwhile, MLN 102 (1987) 691706; here, 69899.
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a kind of mechanical expenditure of the same semantic currency in the interests of effecting
an intensification of meaning. This identity of adjectives is what allows for the implicit
association of the three concepts the joke names: an iron forehead as a metaphor for rigorous
reasoning; an iron cash-box as a figure for tight-fisted thrift; and an Iron Crown as the
symptom of sociopolitical recognition. Freud thus summarizes the gist of this joke as follows:
Mit der notigen Frechheit und Gewissenlosigkeit ist es nicht schwer, ein groes Vermogen
zu erwerben, und zur Belohnung fur solche Verdienste bleibt naturlich der Adel nicht aus
[With the help of the necessary boldness and lack of conscience it is not difficult to amass a
large fortune, and for such services a [noble] title will of course be a suitable reward (Witz
44; Jokes 43). How curious it is, however, that the single element Freud leaves out in this
summary of the jokes pointe is precisely the theme he has been pursuing and for which
the joke is meant to stand: the profit of thrift. Indeed, Freud seems to be so obsessed with
demonstrating how thrift dictates the structural mechanism of this joke that he completely
overlooks how the substance of the joke itself addresses exactly this issue. We are dealing
once more, in other words, with a kind of unacknowledged metajoke in which the content
serves as a commentary on the structure, and the form represents a structural emblem of the
content. It is as though the joke were a modernist work of art, in which form and content
are mirrors of one anotherand in which, moreover, complex ideas are condensed into
extremely economical expression. It does indeed seem, as Freud writes, that everything
here is Sache der Okonomie

[a question of economy] (Witz 43; Jokes 42), but in an even
more profound and extended sense than Freud himself had in mind.
The greatest theoretical challenge Freud faces in this work is understanding how this
economizing on the level of joke structure is related to the pleasure profit (Lustgewinn) the
joke brings inwhich is tantamount to explaining how an iron forehead and iron cash-box
result in the reward of an Iron Crown. At this point, he is only able to resolve this puzzle
by questioning his own central thesis: namely, that jokes rely solely on this economizing
mechanism. He admits herewith feigned reluctancethat there must be something specific
to the nature of this economizing in jokes, since laconism or thrift is in itself not funny. Yet
he tellingly questions his own central proposition by turning to an analogy drawn specifically
from everyday economic practice: housewives intent on buying vegetables at the cheapest
possible price.
Auerdem finden wir den Mut zu bekennen, da die Ersparungen, welche die
Witztechnik macht, uns nicht zu imponieren vermogen. Sie erinnern vielleicht
an die Art, wie manche Hausfrauen sparen, wenn sie, um einen entlegenen Markt
aufzusuchen, Zeit und Geld fur die Fahrt aufwenden, weil dort das Gemuse um
einige Heller wohlfeiler zu haben ist. (Witz 45)
[And let us, further, have the courage to admit that the economies made by the
joke-technique do not greatly impress us. They may remind us, perhaps, of the
way in which some housewives economize when they spend time and money
on a journey to a distant market because vegetables are to be had there a few
farthings cheaper. (Jokes 44)]
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107
Freud rightly goes on to ask what jokes save by this technique; for like the housewives
in his anecdote, they expend an inordinate amount of intellectual energy in search of that
one wordlike the adjective eisern in the sample jokethat effects the economizing condensation necessary to give vent to laughter. There thus seems to be something inherently
irrational that underlies even the most rigorous economic thinking, a kind of obsession with
thrift that can seduce us into the counterintuitive situation of the housewives who spend more
to save little. If previously Freud had approached joke-technique as though it were a kind of
savings account, in which incremental savings accrue compound interest and thereby permit
the extravagant expenditure of laughter, he now suggests that these savings themselves are
an economic deception and are bought at a price dearer than their inherent value.23 In short,
instead of investing a little to gain a lot, we now seem to be investing a lota great deal of
intellectual energyto gain what at first blush seems to be very little.
Freuds response to this economic conundrum is itself significant. Instead of providing
an answer that will resolve this dilemmaa dilemma that calls into question his own central
hypothesishe opts for diversion and postponement, the same strategies an insolvent debtor
might employ when a creditor calls in his debtsor, for that matter, the same strategies
Freuds marriage broker and Schnorrer implement when they are called upon to defend
their counterintuitive economic practices. But even more telling is that Freud himself, in the
argument and rhetorical structure of his own work, is imitating the pattern he has ascribed
to jokes: he has invested a great deal of intellectual energy in establishing his primary thesis
about the economizing principle of jokes, only to reveal that this investment brings a fairly
meager payout in knowledge. The intellectual economy of Freuds own joke book seems,
at least at this early juncture, to be radically out of whack. To be sure, Freud does have an
answer to the paradox he has articulated; but he refuses to express it here, choosing instead to
focus his attention on more sample jokes in order to interrogate further his hypothesis about
the economizing tendency of jokes. His tactic, in short, is analogous of that to a joke-teller:
instead of moving straight to the pay-off, Freud ratchets up the interests and investments
of his audience, building up tension so as to increase the power of the punch line when
he eventually pronounces it. He is borrowing a tactic, in other words, from the rhetorical
storehouse of the joke itself as a way of capitalizing the persuasive force and increasing the
knowledge-payout of his own treatise.
Freuds readers have to wait for more than one hundred pages before they are offered a
solution to the economic puzzle he has posed, namely, why jokers (or joke theoreticians) invest
so much intellectual energy to gain so little. The answer lies for Freud in the communicative
or social character of the joke itself, the fact that it is not created simply for the joketellers benefit, but also for the pleasure-profit of its audience. And it is here, of course, that
accounts finally fall into line and begin once more to make economic sense. For the audience
makes little or no intellectual investment in the joke, and the pleasure-payout it receives
hence comes at a very small price. The listener has bought [erkauft] his pleasure, as
Freud remarks, mit sehr geringem eigenem Aufwand [with extremely small expenditure
23
Volosinov is thus incorrect in reducing the economy of jokes to the formula of minimum input for
maximum results (60); Freuds theory is actually much more complicated than the Marxist is willing to
allow.
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of his own], so low, in fact, that it could even be considered a gift [geschenkt], simply
because he has saved [erspart] any substantial intellectual investment (Witz 166; Jokes
148, trans. modified.).24 At this moment, the joke ceases to function as a personal investment
strategy or savings account for the teller, and instead assumes the character of a commercial
transaction, in which the joke-teller plays the role of a producer who creates for the pleasurable
consumption of a third party.
Of course, we are still faced with the problem that the jokester seems to be working
for the profit of othersa kind of proletarian worker exploited by the capitalist consumer, in
a Marxist take. But it is precisely here that the model of the commercial transaction becomes
significant, for all such transactions are supposed to incur mutual profit for both parties;
hence Freud theorizes what he calls, borrowing from Ludovic Dugass (1857?) Psychologie
du rire (1902), the ricochet effect of laughter, the idea that the pleasure of the listener
as joke-consumer redounds, in a secondary and highly mediated manner, to the pleasure
of the joke-producer. Freud then shifts metaphorical registers to view laughter as a kind of
contagion that, once generated in the joke-consumer, infects the joke-teller as well, which
then makes it possible to explain why the jokester can only laugh at his or her own joke in
temporal delay, after the listener has laughed.
Es ist dann nicht abzuweisen, da wir unsere Lust erganzen, indem wir das
uns unmogliche Lachen auf dem Umweg u ber den Eindruck der zum Lachen
gebrachten Person erreichen. [ . . . ] Das Lachen gehort zu den im hohen Grade
ansteckenden Auerungen
psychischer Zustande; wenn ich den anderen durch
die Mitteilung meines Witzes zum Lachen bringe, bediene ich mich seiner
eigentlich, um mein eigenes Lachen zu erwecken, und man kann wirklich
beobachten, da, wer zuerst mit ernster Miene den Witz erzahlt hat, dann in
das Gelachter des anderen mit einer gemaigten Lache einstimmt. (Witz 174)
[That being so, it cannot be disputed that we supplement our pleasure by attaining
the laughter that is impossible for us by the roundabout path of the impression
we have of the person who has been made to laugh. [ . . . ] Laughter is among the
highly infectious expressions of psychical states. When I make the other person
laugh by telling him a joke, I am actually making use of him to arouse my own
laughter; and one can in fact observe that a person who has begun by telling a
joke with a serious face afterwards joins in the other persons laughter with a
moderate laugh. (Jokes 15556)]
Who, we might ask, is exploiting whom in the social and economic exchange initiated by
the joke? If at first blush it seems that the jokester is the production slave of the consumer, it
now turns out that the joke-producer has been exploiting the consumer all along as nothing
but a vehicle to generate his or her own laughter. What we have here is a miniature model
24
See Weber (70304), who has expounded on this quality of the joke as a gift of laughter, a mode of
economic wastefulness that runs counter to and subverts the economy of thrift Freud otherwise upholds
in the joke book.
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109
of an ideal and mutually beneficialalthough hardly equaleconomic exchange: despite

the fact that one party has made a significantly greater psychic investment, both come
away in the end with a pleasure-profit. Now, one might say that this is also an investment
strategy on the part of the joke-tellershe expends intellectual energy to produce the joke
in anticipation of the payback that will come via the detour (Umweg) of exchange with
another party and the temporal delay this involves. But the exchange situation makes this a
much more complicated, and hence also much less predictable investment, since it is now
reliant on the joke-consumer reacting with the anticipated response. But nonetheless, what
Freud describes as the social motivation of the joke is really nothing other than a process
of economic exchange in which production generates a profit via an act of consumption.
However, two crucial moments have entered into the economic equation at this point: detour
and deferral. It is only by means of this detour via the process of exchange with a third
party that the joke-teller is able to derive added value from the initial investment of effort.
Moreover, this detour also entails postponement of the pleasure-payout, which only returns
after passing through the roundabout of communicative-economic interchange.
If we return now to our consideration of the rhetorical tactics Freud deploys in the
creation of his own book about joke-theory, we will see once more that it imitates and reflects
the very structure he attributes to the social quality of the joke-process itself. For Freud
himself only arrives at theoretical pay-dirt by taking a wide-ranging detour that examines
many more jokesmost of which have an explicit or implicit economic contentso as to
resolve his dilemma and ultimately confirmthe necessary revisions having been madehis
initial theory about the economizing tendency of jokes. This postponement leaves Freuds
readers in a state of puzzlement for an extended period, until they experience enlightenment
once he has explained the detoured and deferred nature of the jokes pleasure-payout for
the jokester. Detour and deferral on the level of discursive structure, in other words, serve
to reinforce the theme of deferral and detour on the level of argument. And of course the
reverse is also true: Freuds theory about the social, commercial-communicative character
of the joke subliminally informs the strategy of his own writing process. Freud is assuredly
aware that anyone, like himself, who writes for a critical public, does not derive pleasure from
the labor of writing itself, but instead from the compensation received mediately through
the acknowledged pleasure the work produces in his readers. Freuds joke treatise, like the
jokes it describes and about which it theorizes, is structured in such a manner that builds up
tension through detour and deferral in order to maximize the pleasure-payout of the reader.
Moreover, the generation of this windfall profit in the reader serves as an economic strategy
for ensuring an incrementally higher pleasure-payment for its author in this roundabout
process of intellectual exchange.
Postponement and deferral are among the most frequent techniques Freud employs for
the construction of his argument in the joke book, so that the example cited here could stand in
for many. Indeed, almost every discrete section of this work ends with abrupt irresolution, with
problems that demand further attention, and with promises of more satisfying conclusions
farther down the road. For example, when he contrasts a statement by Jules Michelet, which
he characterizes as eine wirkliche Dummheit [a real piece of stupidity], with what he
considers a genuine joke by one of his favorite writers, the physicist and humorist Georg
Christoph Lichtenberg, and then asks what distinguishes them, his only answer is: Das
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konnen wir freilich in diesem Moment nicht angeben [For the moment, we must admit,
no answer can be given] (Witz 63; Jokes 60). Similarly, when he comments at the end of
the chapter dedicated to the technique of jokes on the so weitgehende Ubereinstimmung

wie die zwischen den Mitteln der Witzarbeit und denen der Traumarbeit [So far-reaching
an agreement between the methods of the joke-work and those of the dream-work], he
breaks off this line of reasoning by postponing its detailed demonstration for a later time:
Diese Ubereinstimmung
ausfuhrlich nachzuweisen und ihrer Begrundung nachzuspuren,
wird eine unserer spateren Aufgaben werden [To demonstrate this agreement in detail and
to examine its basis will be one of our later tasks] (Witz 96; Jokes 89). Indeed, the entirety of
chapter six, which will begin almost one hundred pages later, deals explicitly with the relation
between jokes, dreams, and the general mechanisms of the unconscious. These anticipations
of arguments and solutions that will only be delivered much later clearly have the tactical
purpose of engaging the reader more actively in the problems Freud is trying to resolve. This
aspect also has its specific parallel in Freuds joke theory; for in order for the joke-consumers
to have any pent-up investments that can eventually be released in the form of laughter, they
must have been incited to make their own intellectual investments, in the form of anticipations,
that eventually prove unnecessary and therefore can be expended in the wasteful exuberance
of laughter. Freud dubs this investment on the listeners part a Hemmungsbereitschaft, a
readiness for inhibition that replicates the inhibition in which the joke-teller participates.
This increased investment on the part of the audience is precisely what distinguishes jokes
from other forms of suspenseful storytelling; for the energy expended in trying to solve,
in anticipation of the punch-line, the jokes puzzle, is ultimately shown to be superfluous
and, hence, can be expended in the exuberance of laughter. Freud goes on to elucidate this
anticipatory investment by applying a descriptive metaphor that explains how it then can be
converted into the tension-relaxing pleasure of laughter.
Diese Hemmungsbereitschaft, die ich als einen wirklichen Aufwand analog einer
Mobilmachung im Armeewesen fassen mu, wird gleichzeitig als u berflussig
oder als verspatet erkannt und somit in statu nascendi durch Lachen abgefuhrt.
(Witz 169)
[This readiness for inhibition, which I must regard as a real expenditure, analogous to mobilization in military affairs, will at the same moment be recognized
as superfluous or too late, and so be discharged in statu nascendi by laughter.
(Jokes 151)]
Just as the joke-hearers must mobilize their armies and make excessive expenditures in
imitation of the inhibitions the joke-teller seeks to overcome, Freuds readers must replicate
the inhibitions he models in the constant detours his argument takes and in the deferrals
of his conclusions. Only by artificially inciting these military investments in the form of
anticipations and cogitative cooperation can Freud prepare the ground for his readersand
hence subsequently, for Freud himselfto gain a sudden and exhilarating profit of pleasure
when the proper conclusions are finally drawn, freeing up the readers allocations of intellectual attention to be expendedhere not as laughter, but as the pleasure one takes in the
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resolution of a nagging question or problem. What accrues to Freuds reader, in short, is

the pleasure of a sudden gain in knowledge. Freud himself, like the joke-teller, has invested
large amounts of intellectual energy in the actual resolution of these problems; as a result, his
pleasure pay-out comes reflexively and deferred, as supplement to the knowledge-pleasure
that has been bestowedalmost as though it were a gift!upon his readers. Moreover, the
greater their pleasure, the higher the pleasure-return that will eventually accrue to Freud
himself, as author/joke-teller.
At certain points in the development of his theory, Freud self-consciously reflects
on his own implementation of techniques of diversion and postponement. One of the most
telling examples arises in his discussion of how jokes exploit various aspects of similarity to
achieve their effect. In this context, he relates a joke in which a male joke-teller compares a
wife (or woman more generally) to an umbrella: Eine Frau ist wie ein Regenschirm. Man
nimmt sich dann doch einen Komfortabel [A wife [or woman] is like an umbrella. Sooner
or later one takes a cab] (Witz 84; Jokes 78). For Freud, this joke turns on the contrast
between an umbrella and a cab as means for protecting oneself against a hard downpour,
whereby identifying a wife with the less effective means suggests men must ultimately seek
alternatives to the sexual gratifications a wife provides. Moreover, by indicating explicitly
that the cab is ein o ffentliches Fuhrwerk [a public vehicle] he hints that this alternative
will be found in more public forms of intercoursenamely in prostitution (ibid.). Now
we should recognize, first of all, how this allusive explicationFreud is discussing, notably,
the form of allusion hereinterjects a specifically economic aspect into a joke that otherwise
seems to shun economic themes. More importantly, however, Freud explicitly refuses at this
juncture in his argument to interpret this joke more fully, ostensibly because it manifests
more prominently a technique other than allusion, one he prefers to examine later, namely
Gleichnis, parable or analogy. Da wir es aber hier mit der Form des Gleichnisses zu tun
haben, wollen wir die eingehendere Untersuchung dieses Witzes auf einen spateren Moment
verschieben [But since in this instance we are involved with the form of analogy, we will
postpone the closer examination of this joke to a later moment] (Witz 84; Jokes 78, trans.
modified.). It is significant that Freuds verb for postponement here echoes one of the
fundamental processes he attributes to the unconscious: verschieben is the verb from which
the noun Verschiebung, displacement, derives. Thus, Freud is not merely postponing
this discussion here, he is also displacing it, and thereby once more incorporating into the
structure of his own argument one of the prominent mechanisms of jokes and the unconscious
more generally. But Freud will indeed make good on this promise and return to this joke in
a later chapter, where he not only completely fills in the information only alluded to here,
but also draws the connection to prostitution and sex for hire (Witz 122; Jokes 11011). In
this new context, and once its content has been fully explicated, the joke is relegated to a
new category which he calls cynicisms. Whereas in its earlier citation, this joke served to
exemplify the technique of allusion, here it is categorized alternatively by the cynical quality
of its content.
But what of this jokes character as an analogy or Gleichnis? Freud has postponed
and displacedand hence also promisedto provide us with an explanation of this, as
well. And once more, he delivers on this promise, but at a different place in his argument,
where he is explicitly investigating the nature of analogy as a joke-technique. Once again,
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we accrue considerable dividends if we pay special attention to his language when he

returns to this theme: Eine andere Art der indirekten Darstellung, deren sich der Witz
bedient, das Gleichnis, haben wir uns so lange aufgespart, weil dessen Beurteilung auf neue
Schwierigkeiten stot [There is another kind of indirect representation used by jokes,
namely the analogy. We have saved it up so long because its consideration confronts us
with new difficulties] (Witz 87; Jokes 81, trans. modified). Freuds language itself reveals
how his postponement of this discussion about the role of Gleichnisse in jokes imitates
the very techniques he has ascribed to jokes themselves: he has saved up this examination
so that when it is brought forward the effect will be much like the release of tension, and
the concomitant pleasure, that is generated by a good joke. In joke-telling, as in scientific
writing, it seems, timing is everything.
Throughout his treatise, Freud is bent on demonstrating that economics is truly a
laughing matter, not only in the sense that the techniques and operations of jokes are themselves economic in structure, but also in the very persistence of the economic thematic that
surfaces in the content of the jokes themselves. Although early in this work he openly denies
that the thought-content of jokes is relevant for their humorous effect (Witz 15; Jokes 17),
his own practice and the consistency of his examples proves otherwise. This is no less true
when Freud offers samples that exemplify the subgenre of the Gleichnis. Here he turns to
one of his favorite and most frequently exploited sources, the poet Heinrich Heine, more
specifically the travelogue Die Bader von Lucca (The Baths of Lucca), which has already
provided him with some of his most symptomatic and hence most meticulously analyzed
sample jokes. Although Freud offers little interpretive analysis of this anecdote, it is one of
the lengthiest jokes he cites, and this alone indicates that it carries a certain weight. And
indeed, Freud will return to it later in this work, when he begins his examination of jokes that
serve a critical or tendentious purpose. The analogy around which this joke revolves is one
between the catholic priest, who is compared to a minor clerk in a large business firm, and the
protestant preacher, who runs a small independent business of his own. Whereas the former
knuckles under to the demands of the firm and respects above all the authority and decisions
of its CEOthe Popethe latter must manage his small-scale business dealings on his own
and reproach the larger trading house of the Catholic Church for promoting and profiting
from unfair competition. While the priest, according to this analogy, can relax and let his
many colleagues work to ensure that the firm stays afloat, the preacher must be a proselyte
for the benefit of his own company and deprecate the wares and monopolistic practices of
the larger enterprise whose seat is in Rome (Witz 94; Jokes 87). The humor of this analogy
arises not merely from the way it even-handedly caricatures the representatives of the two
major Christian sects, portraying one group as lazy representatives of a larger institution, the
other as parochial advocates of their own cause, but more particularly from the demeaning
of religious orthodoxies via a trivializing comparison with contrasting business models. All
the apparent spiritual and doctrinal differences between the two major Christian religions
disappear once they are unmasked as motivated by nothing less mundane than the profit
motive.
Just a few pages later, Freud returns to this Gleichnis and remarks that he himself
felt a certain inhibition (Hemmung) in offering it as an example, since he is aware that
some of his readers might take offence at the analogy itself. If they fail to discover anything
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113
funny in the joke at all, this could have the consequence of making them unreceptive to
the distinction he is trying to make by citing it in the first place (Witz 97; Jokes 90).
Significant here is Freuds awareness of, and attentiveness to, his own readers, for there is
a deeper analogy invoked by this comparison between religious institutions and business
practices: it is the analogy between the readers of Freuds scholarly investigation and the
audience that is appropriate for certain types of tendentious jokes. Although Freud only
implies this connection here, it becomes more obvious when he subsequently takes up this
example from Heine a third time. The context in this instance is explicitly the subjective
conditions that determine an audiences degree of receptivity to a jokes humor, where
he notes: in einer Versammlung von Pfarrern und Pastoren durfte niemand wagen, die
Heineschen Vergleiche katholischer und protestantischer Pfaffen mit Kleinhandlern und
Angestellten einer Grohandlung vorzubringen [before a gathering of priests and ministers
no one would venture to produce Heines comparison of catholic and protestant clerics to
retail tradesmen and employees of a wholesale business] (Witz 162; Jokes 145). The reason
for this seems perfectly obvious, but Freud is careful to make it explicit:
Ein Grad von Geneigtheit oder eine gewisse Indifferenz, die Abwesenheit aller
Momente, welche starke, der Tendenz gegnerische Gefuhle hervorrufen konnen,
ist unerlaliche Bedingung, wenn die dritte Person zur Vollendung des Witzvorganges mitwirken soll. (Witz 162)
[Some degree of benevolence or a kind of neutrality, an absence of any factor that
could provoke feelings opposed to the purpose of the joke, is an indispensable
condition if the third person is to collaborate in the completion of the process of
making the joke. (Jokes 145)]
The social dynamic of jokes, their constitution as a process of communicative exchange that
is simultaneously analogous to a business transaction, demands especially in the case of
critical barbs that the audience have a certain receptivityeither sympathy or unpredisposed
neutralityto the jokes tendentious direction. Freuds own reluctancehis inhibitionto
share Heines analogy of Christian clerics with different types of business people derives
from his fear that his employment of this joke might alienate parts of his own readership. The
very fact that he takes the time and energy to even mention this reluctance can be viewed as
a tactic in its own right, one gauged to win back those readers who may have been put off by
his inclusion of this example. Regardless of what his motivation may have been, however,
his admission points up precisely that he views his own readers in a manner that is entirely
consistent with the audience of jokes: he seeks to win their benevolence and ultimately
engage them as collaborators in the completion of the process not of joke-telling per se,
but of joke analysis, and hence of the relationship between jokes and the workings of the
unconscious. There should be little wonder, then, that the very economy Freud attributes to
jokes informs the economy of his own inquiry, not only in terms of content and substance,
but also in the structure of its very argument and in its rhetorical self-posturing vis-`a-vis its
readers.
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It is surely significant that Freud refers to Heines Gleichnis relating clerics to businessmen no less than three timesdespite his apparent anxiety that it may alienate some
readersand this moment of repetition itself represents a mechanism that Freud borrows
from joke technique. We will return to this issue subsequently. For the moment, we simply
want to take note that Freud exploits this very same analogy, just a few pages after alluding
to Heines example for the last time, when he arrives at that point in the exposition of his own
argument where he feels it is necessary to expand and refine his theory of the economizing
and saving tendency jokes display when viewed from a psychological perspective. He
remarks that his deliberations have moved far away from his initial, rather simple association
of jokes and humor with brevity of expression and reduced psychic expenditure. In a final
attempt to explicate the contrast between the intellectual investment of the joke-teller, the
pleasure-profit of the jokes audience, and the marginal profit that accrues back to its creator
via the cooperative joy in the audiences laughter, Freud turns to an extended analogya
Gleichnisdrawn not only from economics, but from business enterprise. The vehicle of
Heines Gleichnis has infiltrated Freuds own choice of vehicles for his analogywhereby,
of course, the critical aura evident in Heines Gleichnis completely evaporates when it is
re-functionalized for Freuds own purposes.
Wir durfen uns wohl den Vergleich der psychischen Okonomie

mit einem
Geschaftsbetrieb gestatten. Solange in diesem der Umsatz sehr klein ist, kommt
es allerdings darauf an, da im ganzen wenig verbraucht, die Kosten der Regie
aufs a uerste eingeschrankt werden. Die Sparsamkeit geht noch auf die absolute Hohe des Aufwandes. Spaterhin, wenn sich der Betrieb vergroert hat,
tritt die Bedeutung der Regiekosten zuruck; es liegt nichts mehr daran, zu
welcher Hohe sich der Betrag des Aufwandes erhebt, wenn nur Umsatz und
Ertrag gro genug gesteigert werden konnen. Zuruckhaltung im Aufwande fur
den Geschaftsbetrieb ware kleinlich, ja direkt verlustbringend. [ . . . ] In ganz
analoger Weise bleibt auch in unserem komplizierten psychischen Betrieb die
detaillierte Ersparung eine Quelle der Lust. [ . . . ] Ebenso werden die im Vergleich zum psychischen Gesamtaufwand geringfugigen Ersparungen an psychischem Hemmungsaufwand, die der Witz zustande bringt, eine Quelle der Lust fur
uns bleiben. [ . . . ] Das Moment, da der Aufwand ein erwarteter, vorbereiteter
ist, tritt unverkennbar in den Vordergrund. (Witz 17576)
[I may perhaps venture on a comparison between psychical economy and a
business enterprise. So long as the turnover in the business is very small, the
important thing is that outlay in general shall be kept low and administrative
costs restricted to the minimum. Economy is concerned with the absolute height
of expenditure. Later, when the business has expanded, the importance of the
administrative cost diminishes; the height reached by the amount of expenditure is no longer of significance provided that the turnover and profits can be
sufficiently increased. It would be niggling, and indeed positively detrimental,
to be conservative over expenditure on the administration of business. [ . . . ] In
a quite analogous fashion, in our complex psychical business too, economy in
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detail remains a source of pleasure. [ . . . ] Similarly, the economies in psychical

inhibitory expenditure brought about by a jokethough they are small in comparison with our total psychical expenditurewill remain a source of pleasure
for us. [ . . . ] The factor of the expenditures being one that was expected and
prepared for moves unmistakably into the foreground. (Jokes 15657)]
Justification for citing this passage at such length can be found in the fact that Freud himself
not only devotes so much energy and space to it, but also introduces it as the culmination of his
argument about the profit that comes to the joke-teller by means of the laughter-transaction
with the audience. The dividends in persuasive force Freud anticipates from the detour via
this extended analogy obviously must outweigh the investment in intellectual energy that
its invention and detailed exposition require. And that, of course, is precisely the point of
the analogy itself, whose upshot might be translated as: it takes money to make money. Yet
for many readers, this section of Freuds text likely presents the most allusive and obscure
passage in what otherwise is a lucid and easily digestible argument. One wonders whether
Freud has not himself begun to take his own analogy between the workings of the psyche
and processes of political economy too literally. His point seems to be that the intellectual
expenditures we make when creating a joke, which he compares to the costs of industrial
production and business administration for factory-made commodities, are necessary and
beneficial to the extent that they contribute to the long-term growth of the business. And
indeed, as the business itself grows, and its turnover and profits exponentially rise, these
costs of administration and factory production sink in relative proportion. In other words,
investments that are initially out of keeping, from an economically sound point of view, with
their initial returns, are vindicated only insofar as they serve as start-up costs that guarantee
extensive long-range profits. Although it may be easy to understand how this works in
reference to a business enterprisewhat Freud describes is the Walmart model of minute
profit margins that accumulate and compound so as to fuel continued expansion and turnover
until the enterprise assumes dominance in its business sectorbut less easy to see how
the analogy actually fits with the human psyche and the economy of pleasure-seeking. Are
we to conceive each individual as a monopolistically-organized enterprise on the scale of a
Walmart, whose currency is pleasure rather than money, and whose aim is maximum accrual
of small increments of pleasure that, when taken together, will finally amount to an expansive
capital? The answer to this question seems to be: Yes, we are. But if that is true, how does this
pattern of competitive expansionism jive with a situation, as in the social dynamic of the joke,
in which one seeks partners as strategic allies that help grow ones own business? Moreover,
can pleasure even be accumulated like money in the capitalist system? And if it can, how
does this very notion of accumulation square with Freuds idea that pleasure is predicated
on the expenditure of psychic energy, and displeasure with its amassing? The economic
model Freud proposes obviously suggests that the energy the joke-customers expend in
their laughter will come back to the producers and help grow their own pleasure-industry.
If Freud ignores these problems, to which his analogy gives rise, he does so because
they distract from the profit he wants to take away from this economic comparison: the
insistence on an input-output paradigm in which we are motivated to spend energy up front,
predicated on the promise that it will pay high dividends in the future. However, this is not
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simply a model of deferred compensation; it is also a socially interactive mechanism that

requires the cooperative transaction with a third party. Transposed into Freudian terminology,
we could say that, in this regard at least, jokes serve the ends of Eros, the drive toward human
communion and community-building. And it is precisely this erotic aimthe wish to increase
his own pleasure by winning the approval of his audiencethat motivates the intellectual
investments Freud makes in this treatise. He does not shy away from exploiting any of
those techniques characteristic of the joke-economyallusion, critical invective, analogy,
repetition, indirect representation, even faulty reasoningif they can be placed in the service
of this end. The problem for Freud, of course, is that, like the joke-teller, he is dependent
on the cooperation of his reader; for the pleasure-dividend that will justify his own initial
intellectual outlay will only be deposited in his account if he succeeds in generating a positive
reception. In short, only if his readers buy his argument and take pleasure in its purchase
will his initial investment win a profitable pay-back. Isnt this exactly what the analogy of
the psychic economy to a growth-oriented business is supposed to prove? Namely, that it is
up to the pleasure-entrepreneurs to make sufficient investments in their product as a way of
ensuring an increase and expansion in the pleasure-turnover for their consumers, and thereby
guaranteeing an increase in their own pleasure-profit. Without the pain of initial investment,
there can be no gain in eventual return.
In order to reinforce the central hypothesis that Freud makes use of the techniques he
diagnoses as operative in jokes as a way of underwriting the rhetorical effectiveness of his
own argument, I will rely on one final example. We are addressing here the issue of repetition
or iterative reinforcement that was mentioned briefly earlier, and whose elucidation was
promised but postponed. Surely it cannot escape the attention of most readers that Freud
relies time and again on a rather finite set of examples in order to expose the techniques and
purposes of jokes.25 As we have seen, many of his jokes fall into broad general categories,
such as those related to the marriage broker and to the relationship between the Schnorrer
and his benefactor. Moreover, we have also witnessed how economic issues dominate the
content and substance of the majority of examples Freud cites, as though he unwittingly
sought to reinforce his thesis about the economy of jokes and their relationship to the general
psychic economy by means of constant economic allusions. The very first example Freud
gives, cited already in his Introduction, comes from Heinrich Heines Bader von Lucca and
treats an explicitly economic problematic. In this travelogue, Heine introduces a character
known as Hirsch-Hyacinththe H-H alludes cryptically to the initial letters in Heines own
namewho boasts that the rich banker Baron Solomon Rothschild treated him as his equal,
ganz famillionar [quite famillionairely] (Witz 10; Jokes 13). In German as in English, the
humor derives from the verbal parapraxis that fuses the adverb familiarly (familiar) with
the noun millionaire (Millionar), suggesting that Hirsch-Hyacinth wants to cozy up with
Rothschild in the hope of profiting from his millions. Freud does not discuss the economic
content of the joke, but simply cites it here as an example of how wit proceeds from
bewildermentthe incomprehensible neologism famillionarto illuminationresolution
25
Especially given the fact that, as Oring points out (Freud and Humor 96), Freud includes around
two hundred examples of jokes, witticisms, and anecdotes in this treatise, it is remarkable how the
repetition of specific examples bears much of the burden of his argument.
GRAY
117
through recognition of the two component parts that make up the new word. Just a few pages
later, in the opening paragraphs of the next chapter, when treating the techniques employed
by jokes, Freud returns to this example, claiming that chance (Zufall) dictates that it should
constitute the starting point of his investigation (Witz 14; Jokes 16). To be sure, what Freud
portrays as serendipity is surely strategic intent, for he devotes no less than the first five
pages of his analysis of joke-techniques to an interpretation of this example, so that this
one sample joke becomes the springboard into a rudimentary outline of his entire project
(Witz 1419; Jokes 1620). Moreover, he makes use of this example here explicitly in order
to demonstrate that it is not the content of the joke that generates the humor, but instead
its formal structure, in this instance the condensation that must occur in order to create the
humorous neologism (Witz 15; Jokes 17). Of interest in the present context is precisely the
fact that already in this first sample joke, in which economics plays such a prominent role,
and which thereby establishes the theme of so many other jokes he will cite, Freud is at
pains to deny the significance of this economic content. On the level of theme and substance,
we must presume, economics is not a laughing matter. But Freuds intention, of course, is
to displace this economic motif from the jokes content or thought-expression to that of its
formal make-up, its brevity, or more pointedly, its manifestation of the dream-technique of
condensation. Only on this formal level does economics become a laughing matter, and it is
here that Freud seeks its relationship to the operations characteristic of the unconscious.
But the unconscious is also familiar with mechanisms such as compulsive repetition,
and this reflex seems to be at work in the construction of Freuds argument in this treatise.
The Heine joke, with which Freuds investigation beings, provides perhaps the best example
of this, since he returns to it not only at the beginning of the second chapter, but once
more considerably later in his examination, at the inception of chapter five, which treats the
motives and social processes typical of jokes (Witz 15758; Jokes 14042). Here Freud is no
longer concerned primarily with the formal techniques that account for the pleasure created
by jokes, but instead with the subjective conditions that motivate their creation by a specific
individual. He now accounts for Heines joke as an autobiographical allusion to his own
poverty, his wish to find financial relief through an alliance with his uncle Solomon, whose
first name and whose wealth resonate in the figure of Solomon Rothschild, and who himself
identifies with the character of Hirsch-Hyacinth, into whose mouth the verbal parapraxis
famillionar is placed.26 Freud thereby makes incredibly economic use of this one single
joke, allowing it to exemplify such diverse and divergent joke-structures as bewilderment
and illumination, condensation, and personal motivation on the part of the joke-teller.
Significantly, in the chapter dedicated to describing the formal techniques of jokes,
Freud points to the effectiveness of precisely this structure, which he terms mehrfache
Verwendung des gleichen Materials [multiple use of the same material], and to which he
attributes the effectiveness of a geradezu diabolisch guter Witz [really diabolically ingenious joke], one which, moreover, manages to achieve this powerful effect mit wie geringen
26
Oring perceptively indicates that this is the sole example of a joke in Freuds entire treatise that is
aligned with the subjective and personal motivations of its tellera theme whose neglect is surprising
in a work authored by a psychoanalyst otherwise concerned precisely with such subjective attributions
(Freud and Humor 9495).
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Mitteln [with such an economy of means] (Witz 3233; Jokes 33). What distinguishes
the economy of jokes, in short, is their capacity to employ meager means to great effect, to
deploy rhetorical tricks and strategiessuch as multiple use of the same materialso as to
generate immense returns of pleasure and persuasion. Freud goes on to remark, moreover,
how the effectiveness of repetition is heightened when it is enhanced by modifications (Witz
3334; Jokes 3334). This is exactly the procedure he himself follows in his exploitation
of the joke from Heines Bader von Lucca: repetition with variation. Once again, Freud is
practicing, in the rhetorical structure of his own treatise, what he preaches about the structure
and effectiveness of jokes. The distinguishing feature of all of these techniques, moreover,
is their economy: economics underwrites not only the pleasure of psychic release that
Freud associates with jokes, but also the rhetorical purchase of his own argument. What
unifies these two enterprises, joke-telling and scholarly argument, is above all the dynamic
exchange of economic transactions in which the investments of the producer-author call forth
the cooperative financial engagement of the consumer-reader. Only by making the proper
rhetorical investments can Freud guarantee that his readers will respond by paying him back
with compound interest.
Surely it would be incorrect to assume that Freud was consciously or intentionally
manipulating the mechanisms of jokes for the rhetoric of Der Witz und seine Beziehung
zum Unbewuten. Instead, it seems more likely that the economic thematic underpinning
his arguments unconsciously or subliminally influences the patterns of his own thought
and discourse. In fact, he invests considerable effort in trying to deny orto use his own
terminologyrepress the economic tenor so patently obvious in the content and thought
of his sample jokes, insisting that only the technical aspects and the formal structure of
jokes is responsible for generating laughter (Witz 15, 103; Jokes 17, 95). Yet precisely this
economic content returns throughout Freuds study with the persistence and inevitability
of the Freudian repressed. It expresses itself not simply in the seemingly inevitable return,
in joke after joke, to an economic, financial, business, or monetary problematic, but also
displacedverschobeninto the very structure of his rhetoric and discourse. And this is
where Freuds own mental presentations most closely approximate the unconscious operations of jokes: for it is precisely this displacement of economically significant ideas from
the level of content to that of psychic structure that guides Freuds central hypothesis.
Throughout this disquisition, those things that arise as economic thought in the conscious
mindFreuds sample jokes, his choice of metaphorsrevert to structures of economic
thinking in the unconscious mindsaving, expenditure, pleasure profit, pleasure transactions. This embedment of economic mechanisms in the functioning of the psyche is what
makes it capable, as Freud remarks, of deriving pleasure purely from its own operation.
Wit, he hence can claim, is eine Tatigkeit [ . . . ], welche darauf abzielt, Lust aus den seelischen Vorgangenintellektuellen oder anderenzu gewinnen [an activity which aims
at deriving pleasure from mental processes, whether intellectual or otherwise] (Witz 104;
Jokes 96). But similar to the way that the Freudian unconscious is economic in its operational
mechanisms, Freuds essay on jokes is grounded in its own unconsciously economic patterns.
In order to understand how or why this should be the case, it is important to recall
that, according to Freud, economics and finance constitute the only domain of conscious
human life that are subject to as much shame, denial, and ambivalence as the taboo realm
GRAY
119
of sexuality. Thus, in his 1913 essay outlining best practices for psychoanalysts in their
dealings with patients, Zur Einleitung der Behandlung (On Beginning the Treatment),
Freud insists that the analyst must be up-front with his patients about the importance of
monetary matters. Not only does money represent, as he maintains here, a significant Mittel
zur Selbsterhaltung und Machtgewinnung [medium for self-preservation and for obtaining
power], but he also remarks on the sexual factors that play formative roles in the evaluation
of money. This implicit parallel between economics and sexuality explains, for Freud, why
cultivated human beings treat monetary and sexual matters with the same Zwiespaltigkeit,
Pruderie und Heuchelei [inconsistency, prudishness and hypocrisy] (GW 8: 464; SE 12:
131). This leads him to assert that openness regarding the monetary relationship between
analyst and patient models the kind of honest demeanor the patients themselves should take
with regard to the otherwise taboo issues of sexuality: the doctors capacity to set aside
any falsche Scham [false shame] about economics encourages the patient to be just as
open when talking about sexual matters (GW 8: 464; SE 12: 131). This relationship between
economics and sexuality in the human psyche also goes a long way toward explaining why
so many of Freuds sample jokes tend to wed the financial and the sexual, the economic and
the obscene, for which the entire class of jokes based on the Jewish Schadchen, the marriage
broker, can stand as representative examples.27 Thus, if obscenity is especially prominent
in tendentious jokes, this is because it allows one to satisfy, via the detour of humor, certain
pleasures that civilization denies us. But this same process of sublimation can also explain
why economics surfaces as a privileged thematic of jokes more generally, and in Freuds
sample jokes more specifically. Economics and sexuality in Freudian theory are simply those
domains with which the unconscious mind is predominantly concerned.
This article has sought to demonstrate that if we consider Der Witz und seine Beziehung
zum Unbewuten as Freuds treatise on economics in a more general sense, then we also
need to go beyond a simple examination of how economic principles explain the mechanisms
of jokes and the physiology of laughter. Indeed, as I have tried to show, economic themes
pervade Freuds study on many different levels: in its rhetoric and discursive patterns, in
the contents of the sample jokes themselves, and even in the logic and structure of Freuds
own argument. But what distinguishes Witz in particular is thatto allude to one of Freuds
sample jokesit allows him to buy his cake and drink his liqueur too (see Witz 6364; Jokes
60). In other words, what he manages to accomplish in this work is not merely an explicit
investigation of the economy of jokes, but also to supply implicit evidence in support of the
idea that jokes gravitate toward economic matters. Yet even beyond this, he accomplishes
one more highly significant thing: he demonstrates the manner in which the very economic
mechanisms he identifies with jokes and the operation of the unconscious mind subtend and
subtly inform the rhetorical practices implemented in this very treatise.
Perhaps it is easier to understand on the basis of works such as this one, with its
carefully wrought structures and patterns, its sophisticated use of metaphor and analogy,
its tactical exploitation of repetition, its strategic investments of intellectual energy and
27
Freud similarly notes that the group of jokes he designates as cynical tend to be directed predominantly against the institution of marriage, precisely because of the restrictions it places on sexual
freedom (Witz 12122; Jokes 110).
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of economizing principles, and its careful deployment of postponement and deferral for
building anticipation and tension, why Freud was nominated for and received the Goethe
prize in literature. Witz is a rhetorical tour de force precisely because it functionalizes the
joke-techniques it describes to weave the fabric of its own structure and propel forward
its own argumentation. As in the classic modernist work of art, form reflects content and
content ordains form. Moreover, Freud makes an economic argument for the logic of this
overlap: it underwrites a rhetorical enterprise in which substantial intellectual investments
bring incrementally larger pleasure-acquisitions through a process of deferred transaction
and economic-communicative exchange that transpires between the author and the reader,
the joke-teller and the audience. In the final analysis, it is this convergence of diverse
economic registers that justifies a designation of this text as Freuds fundamental inquiry
into economics. No doubt he hoped that economics, and a rhetoric schooled on economic
principles, would indeed prove to be a laughing matter, by ultimately garnering him the
pleasure-profits his readers would invest in his theory about the psychic operation of jokes,
as well as in the upstart project of psychoanalysis in its entirety. If Witz could indeed help
him sell the project of psychoanalysis more generally, then Freud, indeed, was guaranteed
to have the last laugh.
University of Washington

Economics As A Laughing Matter Freud S Jokes and Their Relation To The Economic and Rhetorical Unconscious

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The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory

ISSN: 0016-8890 (Print) 1930-6962 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vger20

Economics as a Laughing Matter: Freud's Jokes

Published online: 10 Jun 2013.

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Date: 12 September 2016, At: 02:45

The Germanic Review, 88: 97120, 2013

Economics as a Laughing Matter: Freuds

Geld ist Lachgas fur mich.

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ECONOMICS AS A LAUGHING MATTER

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ECONOMICS AS A LAUGHING MATTER

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ECONOMICS AS A LAUGHING MATTER

THE GERMANIC REVIEW

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ECONOMICS AS A LAUGHING MATTER

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here is Sache der Okonomie

ECONOMICS AS A LAUGHING MATTER

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ECONOMICS AS A LAUGHING MATTER

of an ideal and mutually beneficialalthough hardly equaleconomic exchange: despite

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the chapter dedicated to the technique of jokes on the so weitgehende Ubereinstimmung

ECONOMICS AS A LAUGHING MATTER

resolution of a nagging question or problem. What accrues to Freuds reader, in short, is

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we accrue considerable dividends if we pay special attention to his language when he

ECONOMICS AS A LAUGHING MATTER

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Wir durfen uns wohl den Vergleich der psychischen Okonomie

ECONOMICS AS A LAUGHING MATTER

detail remains a source of pleasure. [ . . . ] Similarly, the economies in psychical

THE GERMANIC REVIEW

VOLUME 88, NUMBER 2 / 2013

simply a model of deferred compensation; it is also a socially interactive mechanism that

ECONOMICS AS A LAUGHING MATTER

THE GERMANIC REVIEW

VOLUME 88, NUMBER 2 / 2013

ECONOMICS AS A LAUGHING MATTER

THE GERMANIC REVIEW

VOLUME 88, NUMBER 2 / 2013

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