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.
The psychology of mimic expression which is certainly of great psychoanalytic significance, has until now been given little or no consideration in psychoanalytic theory. For that reason we are grateful for this paper by Kris which discusses problems of mimic expression as seen in the example of laughter.
There have been many investigations of the normal and pathological development of human motility. The uncoördinated discharge movements of the small child develop, however, not only into subsequent purposeful action, but also into subsequent appropriate mimic expression. Both the former and the latter are the work of the ego; the latter is absent or upset in states of deep ego regression. To be sure, the further development of the ego which evolves into verbal speech, in turn implies a decreasing significance of mimic body speech even though the latter is never entirely unimportant. Its restriction is accompanied by certain refinements: the concomitant speech of the entire body turns into the concomitant speech of diminutive movements of the mimic musculature. When less far-reaching ego regressions, or restrictions of some functions of the ego in favor of the id take place, we witness 'mimic regressions' in which instead of a delicate mimic expression, archaic and more universal 'mimic movements of the entire body' appear. Accordingly, Kris sees 'the problem of central control of mimic actions as a problem of psychoanalytic ego psychology'.
This problem is discussed somewhat unsystematically and in a variety of connections through the example of laughter. Laughter may be voluntarily induced by the ego as pleasure, and it may also—in a state of affect—overwhelm the ego against its will through the sudden release of excessive quantities of psychic energy. Under such conditions defenses against laughter are called into play: either through countercathexes whereby one assumes a cramped, fixed, serious expression, or through sublimation whereby the power of the