In a paper that must have been a pleasure to listen to, the author discusses various forms of humor including shaggy dog jokes, cartoons, the dreams of Charlie Chaplin and Robert Benchley, two case examples, and the smiling of infants. He quotes Freud's only remark on the relationship between nursing and humor and then derives from his examples of humor the idea that humor is a

restitution type of defense against the threat of external deprivation. It reassures the threatened person that he is not dry, bereft, and empty, but has an endless source of supply from within which will nourish him. Cannibal cartoons are a way of dealing with the child's fear of being eaten by the witch-mother, a projection of his own frustrated, devouring aggression.