The ego's use of ambiguity is discussed in relation to comedy and art. The ambiguity of language provides each word with a cluster of meanings. The difference between the comic process and the obsessive state is described, emphasizing that wit and comedy are techniques that enable the individual to express both sides of his ambivalence so quickly that guilt is avoided. If ambivalence is not expressed the basis for comedy is eliminated. In comedy there is less anxiety about object loss and less isolation from objects than in obsessions. Comedy allows escape from the superego by regression. It is creative and analytic in that it exposes our ambivalence and increases our self-knowledge. Comedy is essential 'to preserve the paradoxes of maturity side by side with childishness, socialization side by side with aggression and rebelliousness, orderliness along with ambivalence'.