Here, Freud distinguishes between jokes and 'comic' events. A joke is made; the comic is found - and first and foremost in people.
1. Freud then cites examples of the comic - namely naïve - which are the most similar to jokes. The naïve occurs if someone disregards an inhibition because it is not present within him - therefore it is not surprising that the naïve occurs most frequently in children. The key difference between a joke and something naïve is whether the speaker intended to make a joke or not. Further differences are evident in terms of the condition that both persons speaking and hearing a joke should have similar internal inhibitions - however with the naïve, it is that one person should posses inhibitions that the other is without. So, the naïve, is a species of comic in so far as its pleasure springs from the difference in expenditure which arises in trying to understand someone else, and it would approach the joke in being subject to the condition that the expenditure economized in the comparison must be an inhibitory expenditure.
The comic arises in humans, animals and indeed even in inanimate objects. It is found in movements, forms, actions and traits of character, in both physical and mental characteristics. Other methods that serve to make people comic are: putting them in a comic situation, mimicry, disguise, unmasking, caricature, parody, travesty etc. Freud aims to determine what conditions are valid for the comic. From looking at various examples he proposes that the origin of comic pleasure is the comparison of another person with oneself, from the difference between our own psychical expenditure and the other person's as estimated by empathy. The other source of the comic lies within our relations with the future, as we are accustomed to expect it with expectant ideas. Freud proposes that we quantify an expected expenditure with each of our ideas, and as the comic situation evolves to present something unexpected, this expenditure is less than we had anticipated, producing pleasure.
2. As well as coming across the comic in life experiences, it can also be brought about intentionally. The main methods involve either producing the effect in oneself, or putting others in comic situations resulting from human dependence on external events. The key methods identifiable are (as cited above): mimicry, disguise, unmasking, caricature, parody and travesty. Freud then notes that certain instances of jokes and things comic can be sufficiently similar to produce confusion as to which they actually are. For example, jokes judged as 'faulty reasoning' are similar to naïveté, and indeed are sometimes even referred to as 'comic stories'. Only when we know the condition of jokes in avoiding criticism can we classify these borderline cases. So in terms of the relation between jokes and the comic, from the analyses he gives, Freud concludes that comic pleasure arises from a comparison between two expenditures both of with must be ascribed to the preconscious, whereas a joke, is the contribution made to the comic from the realm of the unconscious. So the comic and jokes are distinguished first and foremost in their psychical localization.
3. Having looked at the relation between jokes and the comic more closely, Freud then returns to the problem of methods of making things comic. He looks at mimicry. He concludes that the more faithful the mimicry is the more pleasure it provides. This can then be translated into terms of reduced psychical expenditure producing pleasure. Furthermore it is again a case of a comparison between expected expenditure and expenditure actually required for an understanding of something that has remained the same. However on investigating the comic this leaves the problem that difference in expenditure, whilst being the basic determining condition of comic pleasure, this difference alone does not invariably give rise to pleasure - therefore what further conditions must be present or what disturbances kept back in order that comic pleasure may actually arise from the difference in expenditure?
4. Freud addresses this problem in so far as it contrasts with the problem of jokes. Freud cites two cases in which comic habitually appears, to try to illuminate this subject. 1) Cases in which the comic appears as though by force of necessity (the 'inevitably' comic) and 2) those in which it seems entirely dependent on the circumstances and standpoint of the observer (the 'occasionally' comic).
The conditions that Freud proposes for pleasure to arise from the comic are therefore more essential to the second class:
a) The condition of a cheerful mood makes one more inclined to laugh and find pleasure in the comic.
b) The condition of an expectation of the comic, in attuning one to comic pleasure also therefore produces a favourable effect.
c) Conversely, imaginative or intellectual work that pursues serious aims interferes with the capacity of the cathexes for discharge - so that only unexpectedly large differences in expenditure are able to break through to comic pleasure.
d) Similarly, if attention is focused precisely on the comparison from which the comic may emerge, the release of comic pleasure disappears.
e) The comic is also greatly interfered with if the situation from which it ought to develop gives rise at the same time to releasing strong affects - such as the disposition and attitude of the individual. This can both accent and diminish the comic.
f) Additionally, the generating of comic pleasure can be encouraged by any other pleasurable accompanying circumstances, as though by some sort of contagious effect (like the fore- pleasure principle in tendentious jokes).
Whilst Freud acknowledges that this may not be an exhaustive list of the conditions governing comic pleasure - they are the ones that relate best to jokes, and serve to demonstrate that comic pleasure cannot be explained so easily as the simple hypothesis that is derives from the discharge of a difference.
5. Freud then looks briefly at the comic of sexuality and obscenity, and its relation to jokes. He proposes that this case approaches the naïvely comic, but is simpler - since every exposure of which we are made the spectator by a third person is equivalent to the exposed person being made comic. Furthermore, Freud proposes that these spheres are significant as they offer many occasions for the comic - for they can show human beings in their dependence on bodily needs (degradation) or they can reveal the physical demands lying behind the claim of mental love (unmasking).
6. Here, Freud addresses psychogenesis of the comic. He proposes that since he has traced jokes back to children's play with words and thoughts, which has been frustrated by rational criticism, there are probably infantile roots to the comic too. Since in children we describe as naïvely comic utterances that in an adult we would call obscenities or jokes. Freud therefore proposes that to find the essence of comic, in a preconscious link with the infantile, the comparison need only touch upon childish nature in general. So, Freud returns to the locations of the comic difference again:
a) by a comparison between another person and oneself
b) by a comparison entirely with the other person
c) by a comparison entirely with oneself.
In the first of these cases, the other person would appear to me as a child, in the second he would reduce himself to a child and in the third I should discover the child in myself.
Freud approaches the final conclusion that "those things are comic which are not proper for adults" with some trepidation though, since he acknowledges that he remains uncertain as to whether degradation to being a child is only a special case of comic degradation, or whether everything comic is based fundamentally on degradation to being a child.
7. Freud here points out the relation between the comic and humour. Since, he proposes, that explaining the comic is bound to make at least some contribution to an understanding of humour. Having found that the release of distressing affects ends the emergence of the comic, humour can be seen as a means of obtaining pleasure in spite of the distressing affects that interfere with it. Therefore the pleasure of humour, arises with the cost of a release of affect that does not occur - i.e. it arises from an economy in the expenditure of affect. Species of humour are immensely varied according to the nature of the emotion that is economized in its favour: pity, anger, pain, tenderness etc. Freud proposes that the processes behind humour may also have infantile connections. On the whole humour is closer to the comic than to jokes, sharing psychical localization with the comic in the preconscious whereas jokes are a compromise between the unconscious and the preconscious. However humour differs from both the comic and jokes, in one important aspect. Whilst they both require an application of two ideational methods to the same act, and thence a comparison, humour is more a case of a liberated expenditure being used elsewhere, which is indeed fatal to the comic.
8. In summary, Freud concludes that the pleasure in jokes arises from an economy in expenditure upon inhibition, the pleasure in the comic from an economy in expenditure upon ideation (upon cathexis) and the pleasure in humour from an economy in expenditure upon feeling. So, in all three pleasure is derived from an economy (as we strive for a mood of euphoria), similar to the small expenditure of energy that we can associate with our childhood, when we were ignorant of the comic, incapable of jokes and had no need of humour to make us feel happy in our life.