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It is possible to distinguish two formulations of the problem in regard to the psychology of laughter. One examines the occasion and cause of laughter and the underlying question runs: 'When does one laugh?'; the other examines laughter as a physical process and the underlying question is: 'How does one laugh?' The first question has as its focus the psychology of the comic, 2 and the second the facts of physiology and anatomy. Laughter as a physical process, and more precisely as an expressive process, will form the starting-point of this paper, but a choice must be made out of the problems in this field and some things must be omitted which would otherwise stand in the foreground. For our aim is to examine, by means of this example, what contribution psycho-analytical considerations can make to the understanding of expressive processes; it is clear that the scope of those considerations is only a limited one and cannot cover the whole subject.
The expression of the human countenance and its play of feature have a mysterious power. They play a decisive rôle in the contact between man and man, always confronting us with the riddle: what is the relation between man's appearance and his personality?3 In every