Failure to Understand Humor

Failure to enjoy a joke or a cartoon does not usually imply a failure to understand it. A prudish person may fully comprehend jokes about sex although they may cause him to feel embarrassment or disgust. Unless it is foreign to one's own culture or is too subtle, most popular humor is relatively easy to understand. In this respect humor differs from dreams, which are rarely so readily comprehended.

When a joke is not understood, investigation often shows that the point of the joke is missed because some essential detail is overlooked or is misperceived. As a result, the listener may give an inaccurate explanation of the joke. In many instances, further investigation of these failures reveals that there is really a hidden wish not to understand the humor. The errors of perception are found to be meaningful in achieving a more acceptable resolution of some conflict that is evoked by the joke.

For a person to avoid understanding a simple joke or cartoon, some intellectual or perceptual blocking must occur. The simplest cause of such blocking is denial: an essential detail of the humor is simply overlooked and the point of the joke is missed. When misperception or distortion of the cartoon occurs, the subject both denies what he sees and projects upon the joker an idea not actually expressed in the joke. This denial and projection is more complex than simple denial and is no doubt the response to a greater danger of break through of ego-alien impulses. In the following examples, certain humorous cartoons evoked not laughter but