a-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud

made of him a clockman (Uhrmensch) by having him announce the quarterhours
at noon time.
You may not be able to disregard the similarity which this examples bears to a
pun, and it really has happened frequently that the dreamer's pun is
attributed to the interpreter. There are still other examples in which it is not
at all easy to decide whether one is dealing with a joke or a dream. But you
will recall that the same doubt confronted us when we were dealing with slips
of the tongue. A man tells us a dream of his, that his uncle, while they were
sitting in the latter's automobile, gave him a kiss. He very quickly supplies the
interpretation himself. It means "auto-eroticism," (a term taken from the
study of the libido, or love impulse, and designating satisfaction of that
impulse without an external object). Did this man permit himself to make fun
of us and give out as a dream a pun that occurred to him? I do not believe
so; he really dreamed it. Whence comes the astounding similarity? This
question at one time led me quite a ways from my path, by making it
necessary for me to make a thorough investigation of the problem of humor
itself. By so doing I came to the conclusion that the origin of wit lies in a
foreconscious train of thought which is left for a moment to unconscious
manipulation, from which it then emerges as a joke. Under the influence of
the unconscious it experiences the workings of the mechanisms there in force,
namely, of condensation and displacement, that is, of the same processes
which we found active in the dream work, and it is to this agreement that we
are to ascribe the similarity between wit and the dream, wherever it occurs.
The unintentional "dream joke" has, however, none of the pleasure-giving
quality of the ordinary joke. Why that is so, greater penetration into the study
of wit may teach you. The "dream joke" seems a poor joke to us, it does not
make us laugh, it leaves us cold.
Here we are also following in the footsteps of ancient dream interpretation,
which has left us, in addition to much that is useless, many a good example
of dream interpretation we ourselves cannot surpass. I am now going to tell
you a dream of historical importance which Plutarch and Artemidorus of
Daldis both tell concerning Alexander the Great, with certain variations. When
the King was engaged in besieging the city of Tyre (322 B.C.), which was
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