Chapter 27

Chapter 27: Censors and jokes

27.1 Demons
27.2 Suppressors
27.3 Censors
27.4 Exceptions to logic
27.5 Jokes
27.6 Humor and censorship
27.7 Laughter
27.8 Good humor

--------------------------------
27.1 Demons, p 274
[Eugen Charniak] suggested that whenever we hear about a
particular event, specific recognition-agents are thereby
aroused.
[...] How much of the fascination in telling a story, or in
listening to one, comes from the manipulations of our demons'
expectations?

27.5 Jokes, p 278
Most jokes, [Freud] said, are stories designed to fool the
censors.
[...] He could not explain why people find humor in the idea of
"a knife that has lost both its blade and its handle".
[...] Once we recognize that *ordinary* thinking, too, requires
censors to suppress ineffectual mental processes, then all the
different-seeming forms of jokes will seem more similar. Absurd
results of reasoning must be tabooed as thoroughly as social
mistakes and inanities! And that's why stupid thoughts can seem
as humorous as antisocial ones.

27.7 Laughter, p 280
The function of laughter is to disrupt another person's
reasoning!