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My dear Dr. Krauss,
You have asked me what scientific value can in my opinion be claimed by collections of erotic jokes, witticisms, funny stories, etc. I know you have not felt any doubt of being able to justify the making of such collections. You merely wanted me to bear witness from the standpoint of a psychologist to the fact that material of this kind is not only useful but indispensable.
There are two points upon which I should principally like to insist. When all is said and done, the erotic quips and comic anecdotes that you have collected and published in Anthropophyteia have only been produced and repeated because they gave pleasure both to their narrators and their hearers. It is not difficult to guess which components of the sexual instinct (compounded as it is from so many elements) find satisfaction in this manner. These tales give us direct information as to which of the component instincts of sexuality are retained in a given group of people as particularly efficient in producing pleasure; and in this way they give the neatest confirmation of the findings reached by the psycho-analytic examination of neurotics. Allow me to indicate the most important example of this kind. Psycho-analysis has led us to assert that the anal region—normally and not only in perverse individuals—is the