Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/341

ot through the mechanism of the production of the comic pleasure. The same mechanism also holds true in unmasking, which comes into consideration only where some one has attached to himself dignity and authority which in reality should be taken from him. We have seen the comic effect of unmasking through several examples of wit, for example, in the story of the fashionable lady who in her first labor-pains cries: “Ah, mon Dieu!” but to whom the physician paid no attention until she screamed: “A-a-a-ai-e-e-e-e-e-e-E-E-E!” Being now acquainted with the character of the comic, we can no longer dispute that this story is really an example of comical unmasking and has no just claim to the term witticism. It recalls wit only through the setting, through the technical means of “representation through a trifle”; here it is the cry which was found sufficient to indicate the point. The fact remains, however, that our feeling for the niceties of speech, when we call on it for judgment, does not oppose calling such a story a witticism. We can find the explanation for this in the reflection that usage of speech does not enter scientifically into the nature of wit so far as we have evolved it by means of this painstaking examination. As it is a function of the activities of wit to reopen hidden sources