Free The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler

of major emotions, as anger and rage; but
after all, love is an emotion. . . . I think that when we discuss emotion
we ought to specify the sorts of emotion we have in mind' (Cannon, 1929).

To p. 61 . The article in which this list appeared is
characteristic of the behaviourist approach; it ennumerated three 'basic
principles' of laughter: (a) 'as an expression of joy', (b) 'laughter
makes for group cohesion through homogeneity of feeling within the group',
(c) 'laughing an be used as a weapon in competitive situations'. The word
'humour' was not mentioned in the article; laughing at 'jokes, antics,
etc.', was mentioned only in passing, as obviously not a phenomenon
worthy of the psychologists' attention.

To p. 63 . Some domesticated animals -- dogs,
chimpanzees -- seem to be capable of a humorous expression and to engage
in teasing activities. These may be regarded as evolutionary forerunners
of laughter.

III

VARIETIES OF HUMOUR

The tools have now been assembled which should enable the reader
to dissect any specimen of humour. The procedure to be followed
is: first, determine the nature of M1 and M2 in the diagrams on pages 35 and 37 by discovering the type of logic,
the rules of the game, which govern each matrix. Often these rules
are implied, as hidden axioms, and taken for granted -- the code must
be de-coded. The rest is easy: find the 'link' -- the focal concept,
word, or situation which is bisociated with both mental planes; lastly,
define the character of the emotive charge and make a guess regarding
the unconscious elements that it may contain. In the sections which
follow I shall apply this technique to various types of humour.

Pun and Witticism

Our spacemen, Mrs. Lamport fears, are 'heading for the "lunar bin".'
The ageing libertine, she tells us, 'feels his old Krafft Ebbing'.
The Reverend Spooner had a great affection, or so he said, for 'our queer
old dean'.

One swallow, the proverb says, does not make a summer -- nor quench the
thirst. Elijah's ravens, according to Milton, were 'though ravenous
taught to abstain from what they brought'. Not so Napoleon, who,
shortly after his coronation, confiscated the estates of the house
of Orléans, which caused a contemporary to remark: C'est le
premier vol de l'aigle . Equally to the point was Mr. Paul Jenkin's
discovery regarding the pros and cons of Britain's entry into the Common
Market: 'The Cons were pro, while Lab has turned con.'

The pun is the bisociation of a single phonetic form with two meanings --
two strings of thought tied together by an accoustic knot. Its immense
popularity with children, its prevalence in certain forms of mental
disorder ('punning mania'), and its frequent occurrence in the dream,
indicate the profound unconscions appeal of association based on pure
sound. Its opposite number is the rhyme. In between these two, on the
central panel, the bisociation of sound and sense assumes a playful
form in word games like Lexicon, anagram, and crossword puzzle; and a
serious form in comparative philology and paleography, the deciphering
of ancient inscriptions (pp. 186-7).

Whether the two meanings associated with the pun are derived from the
same root as in 'lunar bin'; or are homonyms as vol = flight and vol = theft, is irrelevant provided the two derivations have
drifted apart far enough to become incompatible. In fact, there is a
continuous series stretching from the pun through the play of words
( jeu de mots ) to the play of ideas ( jeu d'esprit ). Let me
quote a few more examples of the latter.

The super-ego is that part of the personality which is soluble in
alcohol . The concept 'soluble' is bisociated (a) with the context
of the chemical laboratory and (b) with the (metaphorical) dissolution
of one's high principles in one's cups. The first few words of the
sentence arouse perhaps a mild irritation with the Freudian jargon --
or apprehension, as the case may be; which is then tittered away through
the now familiar mechanism.

Here