It is different, however, if no external factors but internal hindrances stand in the way of the direct realization of the tendency, that is, if an inner feeling opposes the tendency. Nevertheless it may seem strange to us that these and analogous tendency-witticisms have not the power to produce a strong laughing effect, no matter how much they may gratify us. In one case the tendency serves to answer one insult with another in the other case it offers an affront instead of the demanded expert opinion in both cases the tendency was opposed by purely external factors, namely, the powerful position of the persons who are the targets of the insult. This process we found, for example, in the reply which Serenissimus received to his query whether the mother of the stranger he addressed had ever sojourned in his home, and likewise in the question of the art critic who asked: “And where is the Savior?” when the two rich rogues showed him their portraits. The simpler case is the one in which the gratification of the tendency is opposed by an external hindrance which is eluded by the wit. But the manner in which wit brings about gratification is connected with special conditions from which we may perhaps gain further information. That such gratification is a source of pleasure is self-evident without further discussion. The pleasure in tendency-wit results from the fact that a tendency, whose gratification would otherwise remain unfulfilled, is actually gratified. We shall therefore commence with the former.

It seems to us that the desired explanation can be more easily ascertained in tendency-wit than in harmless wit.

What we now desire to ascertain is the manner in which pleasure originates from these sources and the mechanism of this resultant pleasure. We know that we can be easily misled to mistake our sense of satisfaction experienced through the thought-content of the sentence for the actual pleasure derived from the wit, on the other hand, the latter itself has two intrinsic sources, namely, the wit-technique and the wit-tendency. WE can now definitely assert that we know from what sources the peculiar pleasure arises furnished us by wit. The Pleasure Mechanism and the Psychogenesis of Wit

Wit and its relation to the unconscious