You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Grotjahn tries to deal with the deeper symbolism of the 'laughable' in jokes, the comical, humorous, caricature, farce, comedy, fairytale figures, etc.; Freud, while being mainly concerned with the function of jokes, did not give the symbolic meaning of jokes the attention he gave to the symbols used in dreams. But it is the deeper symbolism which connects the laughable with the creative unconscious. Hence the book often takes us to the borderland between the joke and art which, in a way, lies 'beyond laughter'.
The author found in his clinical work that an interpretation given in the form of a joke was sometimes more easily understood than if given in a more direct manner. He hopes that the non-analytic reader, too, will be readier to meet his own unconscious if it is presented to him in the guise of a joke. Thus reading this book becomes a somewhat unsettling experience. While we still laugh about a light-hearted joke or caricature, the author suddenly reveals the anguish hidden behind the laughter. Nor is this technique conducive to coherent argument. It is as a source book of creative experiences that the book will succeed, and not so much as a textbook on psycho-analytical aesthetics. It reminds one of Groddeck's incomparable excursions into the deep unconscious, laughing yet dead serious and implying important theoretical progress. Particularly rewarding, to my mind, is the author's attempt to establish the connexion of laughter with the personality as a whole, particularly with its aggressive components. For instance, in the typical Jewish jokes the aggression is directed against the self, hence non-Jewish narrators will not easily succeed in telling them. Women, generally, are not accepted as witty, at least in our civilization, because their wittiness is felt as castrating aggression; while women among themselves will resort to other forms of attack. The aggression of a joke renounces physical acting out. Hence practical jokes and 'kidding' lack