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This article continues the investigations begun by Freud on Humour. Humour is a defence against reality. The super-ego of the humourist is largely built up from the mother, and is cathected at the moment of humour with narcissistic libido which enables it to support the ego against the threatening danger. The destructive energy is at the same moment sublimated into an intellectual process (Geist) which disarms the hostile outer world, by not taking it seriously. In this way the paternal super-ego, represented by the danger, is destroyed. Humour is a mixed feeling oscillating between mania and depression. To look upon humour as the normal expression (Vorbild) of mania (Fenichel), is to neglect its melancholic traits. The pleasure of humour is economic, as it results from the saving of affect (Freud), but it is also dynamic, as the energy thus saved brings about alterations in the cathexes, which induce narcissistic pleasure. The humourist seems fixated to the mother in the first oral (sucking) stage (humour means liquid), and humour is a contribution of oral erotism to character formation. This is in correspondence with the fact that many humourists are drinkers. Abraham also relates both optimism and pessimism to the oral stage, and they both belong to humour. Kretschmer places both the humourist and one type of realist in the cyclothymic type of temperament.