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In his 1905 monograph, through a discussion of the primary process transforming techniques of condensation, displacement, and substitute formation, Freud demonstrated that jokes have much in common with many non-comic productions of the psyche. As both jokes and music are socially accepted procedures whereby adults derive pleasure from sound relationships that lack verbal meaning, it is not surprising that music also shares in these similarities.
Schenkerian, or linear-analytic, study provides an organic view of musical conception. This paper shows how the graphic techniques of linear analysis are particularly well-suited to bringing deeply disguised aural similarities into focal awareness. Close musical analysis is used to demonstrate that the same transforming processes that allow pleasurable rediscovery of the familiar in a joke also are active in music. Thus, through linear analysis, we can discover many beneath the surface integrative techniques in a musical composition, and we can see the origin of some of these musical procedures in the thought processes developed in early childhood.