Chapter 3
Laughter and Bisociation
1) [page 77] Gurdjieff’s theory of the binary structure of laughter (O) elaborated in terms of Koestler’s theory of bisociation or ‘double association.’
2) The variable physiognomy of laughter attests the possibility of practically any emotional attitude becoming a constituent of O.
3) The role of implicitness in generating the ‘cognitive geometry’ of the bisociation is even more indispensable for the evocation and intensification of the corresponding emotional bisociation, which is the focus of ‘humor’ (hâsya) in Indian aesthetics.
4) The concept of ‘operative fields’ and their affective component.
5) Koestler’s bisociation is only cognitive: emotion is spilled when its corresponding field is suddenly replaced by an incompatible field. Gurdjieff’s ‘bisociation’ is also emotional: the collision of opposing fields is paralleled by the mutual neutralization of contrary emotions. Reduction of Koestler’s bisociation to a specific mode of Gurdjieff’s, which is more relevant for the Indian conception of hâsya.
6) Gurdjieff’s ‘laughter in the intellectual center’ also accounts, pace Koestler, for bisociative laughter where the operative fields are emotionally neutral.
7) Unspecifiability of humor due to (i) the selective operators of the bisociated fields being on a lower level of consciousness (even unconscious) than the members of the fields; (ii) discharge of the incipient emotion(s) of the bisociation even before they acquire recognizable specificity. [78]
8) Universal confusion of humor and laughter justified in terms of the mediating function of the bisociative convulsion (O).
9) Bisociation permits wholly different ‘senses of humor’ within a single universally valid theory of humor, for the structure remains the same even with variation of emotional content and range of selective operators.
10) Reduction of Bergson’s and Freud’s theories to the bisociative model and their re-derivation from the latter. Bergson’s neglect of emotional dynamics of the comic criticized. The quiproquo is the formal dramatic objectification of the bisociative structure. His ‘mechanical/organic’ opposition reduced to clash between appropriate/inappropriate fields. Rebuttal of Bergson’s and Freud’s chief objection to theories of the bisociative type. Bergson’s definition of ‘reciprocal interference of series’ is bisociative.
11) Fundamental difference between Freud’s and Gurdjieff’s theories of laughter is that for Freud the energy ‘economized’ (to be discharged) is due to a difference in expenditure, whereas for Gurdjieff the superfluous energy is the sum of opposing expenditures. Freud’s principal objection to bisociation is that he is unable to account for this ‘difference in expenditure’ in terms of it (e.g., in the ‘naïve’).
12) Freud’s ‘harmless wit’: those techniques (also found in rhetorical figures) which are common to the ‘dream-work’ and without noticeable emotional charge. Dream-work is funny only when latent dream-thoughts of the unconscious are juxtaposed to the conscious recall of its manifest content; dream-work, unlike joke-work, is never funny in itself. The unconscious in jokes is only one pole of a constitutive bisociation of which the other pole is the conscious. Freud’s extra-comic psychoanalytic bias in privileging jokes distorts his treatment of other categories of the comic.
13) Freud’s ‘tendency-wit’: harmless wit + repressed emotional charge (which accounts for the irresistible force behind tendentious laughter). Fore-pleasure principle. Whereas for Freud the superfluous energy discharged as laughter derives from ‘economy’ in expenditure on inhibition, for Koestler it derives from the (not necessarily) repressed emotion of the tendency itself. Gurdjieff’s model implies rather that it is the combined energies of reinforced inhibition and released tendency that are discharged as laughter. Freud’s three conditions for liberation of inhibitory cathexis (as laughter) more simply and consistently derived from Gurdjieff’s bisociative model. Ambiguity/ambivalence of laughter as being simultaneously a rejection of and participation in the (forbidden) tendency. Bergson’s laughter as social corrective irreconcilable with Freud’s laughter as the lifting of internal inhibitions, but both are derivable from the bisociative model which Mary Douglas finds implicit in Freud’s theory. [79]
14) Freud’s ‘humor’: discharge of incipient unpleasure. Such incipient pain (alpa-duhkha) is recognized by Abhinava in all forms of determinate laughter, which tends to be borne out by empirical psychology. [80]
Before we go on to distinguish humor from laughter, hâsya from hâsa, it would be useful to examine more closely and formulate the basic mechanisms whereby the stimulus S is able to simultaneously produce two sharply contrasting reactions that constitute the organismic variable O. As this basic process has already been exhaustively analyzed and discussed by Arthur Koestler, in Insight and Outlook, where he sums it up in the term ‘bisociation,’ we shall largely draw upon him in this chapter though our conclusions will differ from him on an important point, where his theory diverges from that outlined by Gurdjieff in the preceding chapter.
That different emotional attitudes can generate or underlie the common response of laughter is evident, even independently of psychological considerations, from the mere physiognomy of the laughter which is determined, among other factors, by “the (variable) emotional background formed by the initial emotional state and by the emotional charge carried by the comic stimulus itself” (Insight and Outlook, p.13). Where one component of O precedes the other (chapter II, point #8), it will determine whether the result is a sardonic, inviting or nervous smile, a jovial, embarrassed or diabolical laugh. [81]
The problem now is to determine how the stimulus S which would normally produce a single unilateral response, positive or negative, is under specific conditions able to produce the ‘bisociative’ response, both positive and negative, responsible for laughter. S produces an exclusively positive or an exclusively negative response depending on its association with a particular context that gives it a singular meaning. But where it is simultaneously associated with two sharply distinct contexts, that confer two mutually contradictory meanings or evaluations upon it, S produces, by virtue of its junctional position, simultaneously a negative and a positive reaction. Koestler has made detailed analyses of numerous jokes and witticisms (standard ones borrowed from Freud, Bergson, Sully, etc.) to demonstrate this ‘cognitive geometry’ inherent in the comic stimulus, and we shall analyze a few later on. But for our purpose it is sufficient here to examine the conclusions of these analyses, and the interested reader may easily look up these examples in Koestler. Bisociation refers to “any mental occurrence simultaneously associated with two habitually incompatible contexts” (Insight and Outlook, p. 37). “Our diagrams all show the same pattern of two unrelated association trains suddenly colliding with each other at a given point.... Generally speaking, what happens at the junction is that a thing is seen in dual light; a mental concept is simultaneously perceived under two different angles.... The junction is a hinge or pivot with two independent thought extensions attached to it. Under normal circumstances the stream of consciousness would follow either one branch or the other, for the two belong to two different systems [82] or planes of mental organization. But the junctional concept behaves in an abnormal way; it is not merely associated to one ideational context: it serves two masters at the same time; it is ‘bi-sociated’ with two independent and mutually exclusive mental fields. The concept of bisociation (dual association) is fundamental to the present book (Insight and Outlook, p. 36). The following joke, borrowed from Freud (Insight and Outlook, p.32), will serve as a fine example for it consists in the simultaneous superposition of several correlated bisociations.
A man about town showed his devotion to a young actress by lavish gifts. Being a respectable girl, she took the first opportunity of discouraging his attentions by telling him that her heart already belonged to another man. “I never aspired as high as that,” was his polite answer.
The apparent simplicity of this witticism conceals a richness of implicit suggestions and the clash of affective undertones released by them. The junction or ‘flash point’ of the bisociation is the word ‘high’ which, as Koestler points out, has a metaphorical meaning in the first, and given, associative context, as opposed to an anatomical meaning in the second suggested context, which has to be reconstructed from a mere hint. ‘High’ taken metaphorically as morally, socially and aesthetically elevated reinforces our impression of the actress as so respectable as to be angelically beyond his reach. Qualifying ‘heart’ it emphasizes the yearning for her love unfortunately already vouchsafed to another. Given the politeness of the answer, we take it as the familiar face-saving device concealing a deep disappointment that tends to provoke our, and the actress’s [83] condescending, sympathy. But even before we can begin to wonder at this all-too-ready admission of defeat, the literal meaning of ‘high’ suddenly pops up and deflates the whole chivalric scene. His interest revealed to have been purely sexual and the angelic figure brutally replaced by the image of a whore. The admission reveals itself to be a lewd proposition: “your can let your heart remain very well where it is, I shall be content with something far inferior.” And the presumed inner disappointment is compensated, even granted her refusal, by the enjoyment of a subtle revenge on her virtue.
Actually one could even discover subtler more general bisociations, underlying all these particular limited bisociations, that account for the deeper appeal of the joke. It is an ironical parody of bourgeois attitudes to romantic love. A woman is supposed to give herself carnally (the inferior part of herself) only as an extra to the [84] suitor who has already won her love (the highest part of her). Here we have a modest suitor who is content with the inferior and, if bourgeois logic were rigorously applied, she ought to have obliged. Taken out of its cultural setting, the humor here would perhaps have lost much of its depth. In any case, all these reverberations are produced as it were simultaneously by the initial bisociative clash between the two meanings of ‘high,’ which by itself can hardly account for the humor. What is essential to the joke is its implicitness, its riddle-like character. The various bisociations are produced by the linking of ‘high’ with all the correlated explicit terms (through the arrows indicated above) of the joke. Yet this linking is possible only through the generation, or reconstruction, of various implicit meanings (in parentheses and which are the meanings of the arrows) by the mind on the receiving end. It is in the process of filling these gaps that the richly variegated emotional reverberations of the joke are produced, and since ‘high’ has two distinct meanings, the two opposing sets of implicit meanings polarize these emotional resonances along the (vertical) line of a fundamental dichotomy. It is this bisociation of the emotional charge that is really responsible for the force behind the joke.
Following Freud,1 Koestler has very much emphasized the role of economy in wit. “To an intelligent audience any joke will sound stale if it is entirely explicit. The true essence of economy is implicitness, which, by the use of hints and [85] allusions in lieu of complete statements, turns the joke to a certain extent into a riddle. By virtue of its implicit wording, the story proceeds in jumps instead of moving along a continuous line, leaving logical gaps and thus forcing thought to race after the words and bridge the gaps by its own effort” (Insight and Outlook, p.31). However, he seems to see the reason for this essential implicitness primarily in the difficulty, often impossibility, of explicitly presenting both the association chains of the bisociation simultaneously; thus elements of both chains will have to be largely hinted or suggested. Though this is certainly true, being necessitated by the temporal linearity of speech, there is a still more important function of suggestion. Even if the opposing meanings could be simultaneously presented explicitly, there is no guarantee that they will arouse the relevant emotional content associated with them forcefully enough, if at all. The re-creative effort involved in filling in the suggested meanings, the attention (Sanskrit: avadhâna) it involves, is also what generates and sustains the emotional content of the joke. “Thus economy is a means of stimulating the associative flow. It makes it impossible for attention to stray; the listener is forced to work out the story for himself by filling in the gaps. But there is another aspect to this technique. By making the listener fill in the gaps, work out the joke for himself, we force him to repeat to a certain extent the process of inventing it; he has to re-create the witticism. Economy is a technique which compels the consumer to a creative effort. It is an essential technique in art as in humor” (Insight and Outlook, p.33).
It is the same as the ‘suggestion’ (dhvani = ‘reverberation’) of the Sanskrit poets (kavi) that [86] obliges their listeners to be ‘connoisseurs’ (sahRdayas). What limits the different associative chains (constituting the suggested meanings) linking the various explicit terms and gives these chains their coherence are certain specific emotional attitudes, organized to form a larger whole constituting the fundamental emotional bisociation. The stimulation of these association chains is at the same time the stimulation in the listener of the emotional attitudes inherent in these constitutive chains. In Indian terminology, the suggested meaning would be categorized as ‘suggested sense subordinated to the expressed meaning’ (guNîbhûta-vyangya) whereas the emotional contents themselves would constitute the ‘suggestion’ of ‘emotion’ (bhâva-) and ‘aesthetic sentiment’ (rasa-dhvani); these emotional contents themselves would be considered the ‘primary meaning’ (mukhyârtha) of the poem or witticism.2 It is a fundamental dictum in Sanskrit poetics that aesthetic emotion can only be suggested and never directly expressed. The role of implicitness is therefore not only to facilitate the creation of cognitive bisociation, but is also indispensable for the emotional dynamics of the bisociative technique.
The coherence that holds together each association chain, formed of suggested meanings linking the different explicit terms, is not necessarily, in fact rarely, a logical coherence but a habitual one. In the process of bisociation the junctional concept is connected simultaneously to two association complexes that are [87] habitually compatible. “Now, ‘habitually incompatible’ does not mean ‘logically incompatible’…. Our association flow is regulated not by logic, but by the habits of thought acquired by past experience. If the flow happens to be logical in stretches, then it is only because the type of association called ‘logical’ has become a habit” (Insight and Outlook, p.37). Here we find it useful to adopt without modification the terminology introduced by Koestler to analyze the behavior of the stimulus of humor in terms of these association complexes. “The concept of bisociation implies the short-circuiting of two separate mental patterns, each of which is self-consistent and structurally homogeneous.... I propose to call such self-consistent and ‘homogeneous’ systems operative fields. Each of these systems or fields is governed by a certain selective rule or structural law, which will be called the selective operator of the field. The mental occurrences which in the individual’s past have appeared in the context of a given operational field will be called members of the field. The term ‘association’ then refers to any mental process within the framework of a given operative field; the term ‘bisociation’ to mental occurrences which are perceived simultaneously as members of two fields” (Insight and Outlook, pp.39-40).3
If the comic stimulus is able [88] to produce the bisociative effect O with such regularity in a particular human community, this is due not so much to some property inherent in the stimulus itself, but because “the same stimulus will elicit entirely different responses of thought and behavior according to what kind of operative field the nervous system is attuned to at the time” (Insight and Outlook, p.43). The operative fields brought into play will be those capable of coherently linking S to the other explicit terms of the presented joke-complex. What should be emphasized here by ourselves is that the selective operators in these cases are as much specific emotional attitudes as the suggested meanings inseparable from these attitudes.
The Emotional Dynamics of Bisociation
“It is of paramount importance (…) to distinguish between
these two basic factors of the comic: its logical geometry or pattern,
and its emotional tension or charge” (Insight and Outlook, p.20).
Koestler has been the first person to distinguish clearly between the cognitive
geometry (bisociation ) of the joke and its emotional
dynamics. Herbert Spencer’s basic thesis that “emotion tends
to beget bodily motion,” which Freud later incorporated in his own theory,
“contains an implicit assumption, a hidden axiom, shared by many other theories
of the psychology of emotions. It is the assumption that emotional
processes have a greater inertia than cognitive processes...to the best of
my knowledge no school of psychology, not even the Freudian, has explicitly
stated this tacit assumption that emotions have a much greater inertia or mass
momentum in the direct physical sense [89] than
the processes of formal thought. In the present theory of the comic, this fact
plays an important part. For when we said that the emotional charge of the
narrative is disposed of in the discharge reflex of laughter, we implied that
emotion is not suddenly transferable from the field of the narrative to that of
the flash, whereas the thought is. Our understanding does jump from the first
field to the second, whereas our emotion, incapable of performing the sudden
jump, is spilled. This difference in behavior implies that emotion tends to
persist in the direction of a straight line, whereas thought can dance about
like a matador; in other words, that emotion has a greater mass momentum” (Insight and Outlook,
pp.59-60). He finally formulates the relationship between the cognitive
bisociation and the emotional dynamics of the comic response as follows: “The
abrupt transfer of a train of thought from one operative field to another leads
to its separation from its original emotional charge. An idea or situation
seen in a sudden new light casts off its affective shadow. This sudden dissociation
of intellectual and emotional state, the rupture between knowing and feeling,
is a fundamental characteristic of the comic” (Insight and Outlook, p.65).
A comparison with Gurdjieff’s formulation of the bisociative or “yes|no” structure existing correlatively in both the intellectual and emotional centers (and moving/instinctive center), while justifying this distinction between the ideational and the emotive aspects of the comic response, contradicts Koestler’s proposition that simply because thought, in the intellectual center, has suddenly shifted into a second operational field, the original emotional charge, being dissociated from the first field, is [90] spilled as laughter. Koestler’s model implies that
1) cognitively, the second operational field wholly substitutes itself for the first,
2) this being sufficient to account for the dissociation of the original charge from the first field, and
3) the unchecked momentum of this original unidirectional emotion is sufficient to account for the laughter.
Gurdjieff’s model suggests on the contrary that
1) the second field does not replace but merely juxtaposes itself to the first,
2) the emotional charge of the first field being dissociated from it only through an opposing charge, and
3) the opposing momentums of both charges neutralize each other, and it is this mutual checking that releases the laughter.
This means that even where there is a temporal sequence whereby the second field wholly dislodges the first and the first emotion is to some extent dissociated, it is the clash of the subsiding momentum of this emotion with the increasing momentum of the incipient emotion related to the second field, that releases the surplus emotional energies in the form of laughter.4 The arousal-safety model of laughter proposed by some empiricists, wherein an emotion like fear, having been aroused in an infant and suddenly deprived of its objective cause in the external stimulus, is resolved in laughter, belongs to this category. The most that could be claimed here is that there is a time-lag between the cognitive bisociation and the clash of opposing emotions. But the point at which the laughter is generated is precisely that where [91] the second field is momentarily juxtaposed to the first, even if this slightly precedes the clash of the corresponding opposing emotions. Interpreted in this way, this anomalous variety, which would seem to justify Koestler’s model, takes its more modest place as merely one common category of Gurdjieff’s model, wherein the bisociative structure is not restricted to the intellectual center, but is repeated on the emotional level as well. Gurdjieff’s model implies that there are two opposing emotions, positive and negative, and where the second charge is only subsequently introduced into the joke-structure, it is the sudden projection of the second operative field that generates or tends to generate this opposing charge.
Koestler appears to have arrived at his model by considering those examples of bisociative laughter where the first emotion is evoked and reinforced before the second is suddenly allowed to intrude (see point 8, p.67 above). Since in such cases, the second emotion is discharged as laughter even before it can acquire any recognizable consistency, whereas the first is relatively obvious, it is easy to understand how Koestler could have come to focus all his theoretical attention on the first emotion alone and neglect the second. But his model breaks down in joke-structures where the opposing emotions are generated simultaneously by the bisociation of thought produced by the very last word of the joke. In such cases, it will be impossible for Koestler to show which field replaces which, and which is the (single) emotion that is discharged. It is also inapplicable to comic situations that more or less by-pass the intellectual center and act directly on the [92] emotional center. If in verbal jokes, there is a temporal sequence sometimes between the two charges, this is because the temporal sequence of speech may sometimes make it impossible to project both the operative fields simultaneously. But where the role of the verbal and intellectual factor is minimized, and the comic stimulus simultaneously evokes the two opposing emotions, due to habitual conditioning, in an ambiguous situation, there can be no question of emotion having to follow thought “in making a jump.” Koestler has the merit of putting the emphasis on the emotions even where it is a question of wit, where it has to do with conflicting ideas in the intellectual center (this is our own definition of wit). But its inadequacy becomes apparent when we consider the comic instead, that is, where bisociation is centered directly on the emotions with minimal intervention of thought (our own definition of the comic), as for example in the contradictory emotions evoked by ritual clowning.
Later on, in our chapter VIII on “The Role of Hâsya in Sanskrit Love-Poetry (zRngâra),” we shall enjoy several verses depicting love-scenes, where all the humor consists in our relishing the delicate wavering between two opposing sets of transitory emotions. Koestler would have been compelled to give a different explanation from that he has proposed for witticisms to account for these instances of the comic. The truth is that we perceive the clown in two different and compelling ways at the same time, and the conflicting emotions associated with the opposing visions are spilled as laughter. If emotion associated with an idea has greater “mass momentum” than the idea itself, then it will be reasonable to assume that this emotion can be neutralized only by an opposing emotion and not by a mere shift of ideas, from [93] one operative field to another, unaccompanied by its own quantum of emotion.
But does this necessarily mean that the clash of two opposing perceptual fields or operative fields in the intellectual center, which are both more or less neutral with respect to their emotional content, will not result in bisociative laughter? McGhee proposed that perception of an incongruity in itself only leads to mild amusement, not to vigorous laughter. He proposed that an additional element of sex or aggression is necessary for strong laughter to occur.5 Though some researchers tend to confirm this postulate, Rothbart’s experiments with children on purely incongruous stimuli seem to throw doubt on it.6 She even suggests that “McGhee’s failure to find strong laughter in children’s responses to fairly neutral cartoons may have resulted in part from the highly judgmental task given to children in his studies” (ibid., p.45). McGhee has however clarified that “emotionally salient materials might be expected to result only in higher levels of affect; laughter is not thereby precluded for purely incongruous stimuli” (ibid., p.52, note 1). Instead of insisting, therefore, that only emotionally charged bisociations are productive of the laughter discharge, we may cautiously conclude that, all other factors being the same, it is the emotional intensity of the bisociated fields involved that will determine the magnitude of the laughter. Since [94] the emotional bisociation is as a rule correlated to a perceptual or intellectual one, there is nothing to prevent the a bisociated perception or idea with minimal emotional charge attached to it from providing the outlet for superfluous nervous tension that is not generated by the bisociative stimulus itself, but is already freely available in the organism. In such cases, the stimulus merely provides the occasion for the discharge mechanism, it does not generate and sustain the energies actually expended. For rasa literature, however, which is based on the relishing of various emotional states, it is the emotional aspect of the bisociation, emphasized by Koestler, that is of prime interest.
Gurdjieff’s formulation of the bisociative theory of laughter within the framework of the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model is hence more fundamental, and thus also more extensive/comprehensive, than Koestler’s formulation of the same. Though sketchy, it permits the possibility of bisociative laughter independently of the intervention of an emotional component (‘center’). It also permits (the relishing of) bisociation in the emotional center without there being any necessity of thought being dissociated from emotion; on the contrary, the emotional bisociation (the delicate balance between two opposing emotions) may depend directly for its nourishment on the bisociation of a cognitive field, wherein the opposing ideas are presented simultaneously. We shall examine concrete examples of the latter further on. Gurdjieff’s model also offers, as we shall see, a sound basis for an adequate theory of humor. [95]
The Unspecifiability of Humor
In chapter I, we insisted that a successful theory of
humor must not only account satisfactorily, and as simply as possible, for all
the complex and often contradictory empirical phenomena related to it, but also
account at the same time for the persistency and universality of certain
misconceptions regarding it. It should not only clarify the nature of the comic
response, it should also explain why so familiar and trivial an experience has
nevertheless refused to yield itself to the analytic scrutiny. Above all, it
must account for the constant confusion between humor and laughter in laymen
and experts alike.
In Gurdjieff’s model of laughter, what is consciously registered by the laugher is the convulsion at O whereas it is wholly unnecessary that the bisociation itself, and even less so its constituent emotions, be the objects of a self-conscious awareness. The laugher may never know what exactly occurs at O though he may know that it always results in an easily recognizable inner convulsion that strikes him as being the same despite the apparent diversity of the situations in which it is produced. It is through the recognition of this familiar convulsion that one establishes for oneself the presence of humor or of the comic in the perception, and often projects this presence into the stimulus itself as a perceived incongruity, though one may be wholly unable to determine what this ‘incongruity’ really consists of. The accomplished humorist is primarily one who has developed the tacit skill of perceiving things in such a way as to evoke this convulsion in himself, or to reorganize the ordinary field of perception in his [96] representation of it to others, so as to evoke this same convulsion in them. But since it is only through the recognition of the convulsion that both he and his admirers are able to gauge his success, the operational skill itself remaining tacit, the humorist may well remain incapable of accounting for his own skill in terms of an adequate theory of humor.7 Nevertheless, any valid theory of humor/laughter must necessarily start from this personally experienced convulsion, which alone will determine the selection of empirical material (jokes, situations, comic figures, etc. for a comparative analysis to reveal their common structural features.
It is precisely this unspecifiable ‘feeling’ that guided Freud in his choice of the extremely rich collection of jokes and other comic materials that he has bequeathed to Koestler and future humor theorists. “This is an opportunity for making a not unimportant admission. We are engaged in investigating the technique of jokes as shown in examples; and we should, therefore, be certain that the examples we have chosen are really genuine jokes. It is the case, however, that in a number of instances we are in doubt whether the particular example ought to be called a joke or not. We have no criterion at our disposal before our investigation has given us one. Linguistic usage is untrustworthy and itself needs to have its justification examined. In coming to our decision we can base ourselves on nothing but a certain ‘feeling,’ which we may interpret as meaning that the decision is made in our judgment [97] in accordance with particular criteria that are not yet accessible to our knowledge…. For the fact is that we do not yet know in what the characteristic of being a joke resides” (Freud, Jokes, p.99). From the beginning till the very end of his analyses, it is this personal ‘feeling’ that remains the ultimate criterion as to whether a particular instance is a joke or not, and the formal criteria invoked are brought in only to justify this feeling by revealing the presence of objective structures associated with and normally held responsible for it. Wherever, as in the case of ‘joking analogies’ (see above, pp.55-56), all the formal criteria of a joke are present but the feeling is conspicuously absent or too vague, it is not this spontaneous, organic, as it were ‘intuitive’ judgment that Freud discredits but it is the formal criteria that Freud declares insufficient or he finds other elements in the instance at hand that neutralize its joke or comic potential. In the case of the ‘joking analogy' for example, he merely distinguishes the automatic “comparison” essential to the definition of the joke from the explicit analogy that may or may not be present in the joke. As we shall see below, it is not at all a question of this ‘feeling’ serving as temporary expedient until we are able to replace it with more ‘scientific’ or ‘empirical’ criteria that will enable us to recognize jokes or the comic without recourse to it. For any attempt to employ such self-conscious analytic [98] procedures of determination necessarily interfere with and render impossible the automatic processes, which are never the focus of our attention, whereby the joke-structure becomes an effective stimulus of bisociative laughter.
But why is the ever-present bisociation, responsible for the convulsion, never recognized for what it is, even by those skilled humorists who are nevertheless adept at exploiting its possibilities to the maximum? As we have seen above, the two opposing operative fields responsible for bisociating the comic stimulus are determined by the coming into play of two opposing selective operators, accompanied by their corresponding emotional charges. In the processes constantly going on in us, the selective operators can be either explicitly given (conscious) or more often implicitly given (unconscious, or rather, of a lower level of consciousness). And the latter is generally the case in the experience of the comic or of humor. “The selective operator (or some of its components) which coordinates and systematizes activity usually belongs to a lower level of consciousness than that activity itself. This phenomenon should not be confused with the unconscious distortion of reasoning by repressed emotions or similar Freudian mechanisms… It is generally realized that the processes which regulate visceral activities and acquired manual skill are often impossible to describe verbally. But it is not generally realized that the same relation prevails between the mental skill of reasoning in specific [99] terms and the field operator which defines these terms, without being verbally definable itself…. Associative routine reasoning in the familiar terms of the given field is the application of an empirically acquired manipulative skill in the mental sphere. The implicit rules of these habit manipulations can usually only be made explicit under the analytical microscope of the logician and the semanticist” (Koestler, Insight and Outlook, pp.45-46).
It is in terms of this unspecifiability of the selective operators involved that Koestler goes on to explain why the bisociative structure, though always known in a sense i.e. tacitly, has yet eluded the critical awareness of humorists, theorists and laymen alike. “This is one of the main reasons why the secret of the comic has resisted so many onslaughts in the course of the centuries. The essence of the comic is the bisociation of two operative fields in a junctional concept which is a member of both; it vibrates simultaneously on two different wave-lengths as it were. But frequently the selective operators are partly, or entirely, implicit and unverbalized; hence it is extremely difficult to sort them out, or rather to realize that there are two different patterns entangled, which have to be sorted out. With the pun, or the comic of disguise, this is still relatively easy, but even in a primitive joke (…) the listener only notices that there is something funny about the reasoning, without being able to tell what it is. As the field operators, that is, the respective implications of both narrative and flash, are mostly on a lower level of consciousness than the awareness of the story itself, their clash is merely noticed as a disturbance of the normal flow of associations, without conscious awareness of what the disturbance [100] consists. The virtue of the higher forms of the comic—irony, satire, caricature—lies (…) in just this fact that the bisociative clash disrupts the fields of implicit habits of thought; it exposes to ridicule conventions which were taken for granted; it shows up in the sharp, pitiless light of an alien field what we have unquestioningly accepted in the dim routine of habit” (Insight and Outlook, pp.46-47). As pointed out earlier, the field operators restore the hidden coherence to the explicit narrative and, in doing so, generate the bisociative field around the comic stimulus. Through them, this stimulus now generates the conflicting emotional patterns responsible for the convulsion O. Our subsidiary awareness of these field operators is merged into our focal awareness of the explicit narrative, they are never cognized independently of the effect towards which they contribute. The delicate balance of the bisociative structure of the cognitive aspect of humor/comic is destroyed the moment the attention is focused on the field-operators themselves; this is what explains why this essential structure has eluded the analytic gaze for so long.
Though Freud does not subscribe to the bisociative theory (he never arrived at conceiving it in the first place), he clearly recognized the necessity of attention being displaced to the few salient stepping-stones provided by the joke-content and hence away from the automatic psychic processing that goes on in the deeps to restore coherence. “We have discovered in the condition of distracting the attention a by no means unessential feature of the psychical processes in the hearer of the joke. In connection with this there are still other things that we can [101] understand. Firstly, there is the question why we scarcely ever know what we are laughing at in a joke, though we can discover it by analytic investigation. The laughter is in fact the product of an automatic process which is only made possible by our conscious attention’s being kept away from it” (Jokes, pp.206-07). Yet Freud has stopped short at registering this vital fact without attempting to explain why these crucial processes cannot bear the scrutiny of conscious or critical attention. Later on, he does specify that this process is essentially an “automatic comparison” (see below, pp.185-87, for our criticism), but does not explain why this ‘comparison’ to be comic must be automatic. The bisociative theory has the merit of revealing why it cannot be otherwise. Attention focused on one (set of) operator(s) will necessarily exclude the possible emergence of the opposing (set of) operator(s) rendering bisociation impossible. But attention focused on the bisociated term permits the simultaneous emergence of the mutually exclusive operators that cancel each other out in the funny convulsion even before their presence can be recognized and registered. There is in fact no ‘comparison’ but only a juxtaposition that can develop into a comparison to serve an extra-comic purpose in some cases, like the joking-analogy.
But all this does not yet explain why the two constituent
emotions of the bisociation (or one of them) may remain likewise unspecifiable.
Not only are the operators which generate the conflicting emotions
unspecifiable, because known only subsidiarily, but the emotions themselves
neutralize each other at their very incipient stage itself, before they can
acquire sufficient [102] consistency to be
recognized in their individual specificities. Thus, though present and
responsible for the convulsion, they may not be known in themselves (except
where one precedes the other and/or remains even when the other has subsided)
and subsequently remembered as such. All that is clearly
registered and subject to conscious recall is the convulsion itself, in the
form “I experienced something funny.” This is not the case with the
stimuli of other ‘simple’ emotions where, even in the field-operator is unspecifiable, the emotion itself is clearly recognizable.
But when the same stimulus is bisociated, only the convulsion is specifiable,
whereas the presence of the above emotion as a constituent of O escapes notice.
The comic response is in this way doubly unspecifiable. Still we shall
see later on that the technique of Sanskrit rasa-poetry is such that in verses
exemplifying hâsya-rasa
(‘humor in the emotional center’) as an accessory to the erotic sentiment (zRngâra), both the conflicting
emotions are easily distinguishable (because well developed and relishable in
themselves) as are the field-operators that generate them (because given in the
form of sustained figures of speech). Such examples are ideal for the analysis
of the bisociative mechanism, because what is really relished is not so much
the pleasurable convulsion but the emotional bisociation itself,
responsible for the convulsion. This is what distinguishes hâsya from hâsa, ‘humor’ from ‘laughter.’
We are now in a position to understand why humor and
laughter have always been so thoroughly confused with each other. If the
structure that constitutes humor is inwardly recognizable only by the
convulsion it produces, and if the natural and automatic external [103] manifestation of this convulsion is through the
different degrees of laughter, then laughter is rightly the best index of this
bisociative structure in both others and in oneself. It is the convulsion at O
that bridges humor and laughter. But at the same time it separates them, in the
sense that humor may be enjoyable for reasons quite different from the pleasurable
discharge of excess energy that constitutes laughter. Though humor and laughter
are not mutually exclusive, the enjoyment of the former is not measurable in
terms of the magnitude of the latter. The value of laughter is that it reveals
the presence of bisociation, but it remains to be understood under what
conditions this bisociation can be distinguished as ‘humor.’ If the discharge
of excessive emotional energies is irrelevant to the relishing of humor, then
it becomes necessary to explain why bisociation in humor results in the minimal
discharge of excessive energy; what happens to the ‘mass momentum’ of the
emotions involved when they clash? This will be the subject of chapter VII on
the “Role of Hâsya in Sanskrit
Love-Poetry (zRngâra).” For the present, it is sufficient to conclude
that laughter is the best index of the presence of bisociation,
to the extent that it can even be charged with signifying functions derived
from the bisociative structure, and thus be used as a voluntary medium of communication.
In the absence of humor, the emotional bisociation should, under normal
circumstances, result in the laughter reflex. Thus though laughter is
irrelevant to the aesthetic relish involved in humor, it is nevertheless most
pertinent to (the determination of ) the structure
of the humor response. [104]
The theory of bisociation also accounts for the extreme
variability of humor responsiveness from individual to individual, culture to
culture, epoch to epoch, and for the wide range of situations, having
apparently little in common with each other, capable of provoking humor in the
same individual. “It can be questioned, therefore, that ‘jokes’ have points or
inherent incongruities which transcend cultural boundaries…. Nothing is funny
to everyone and anything seems potentially funny to someone. Hence (…) the
presentation of a ‘joke’ [is] neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of
humor…” (La Fave et al, Humor and
Laughter, pp.84-85). Since any two opposing emotions can
together constitute the bisociative response, and since each emotion can itself
be engendered by an innumerable number of operative fields, the basic
underlying structure can be evoked in a single individual in a theoretically
infinite variety of empirical situations. As the same time, a person can
respond to a joke only if he has already in himself the two or more selective
operators necessary for generating the two opposing fields to be bisociated. “A
person responds only to that type of joke which sets off a train of
habit-formed associations, leading to automatic expectations, in his mind” (Insight and Outlook,
p.27). In other words, though the bisociative structure of the joke is
universally valid, the content of the bisociated fields will be
conditioned and limited by local, subjective factors. The comic stimulus S can
produce the opposing emotional charges only if the association chains needed to
link S with the other explicit terms of the joke are
not unfamiliar to the consumer. His society and education must have already
deposited in him the necessary selective operators, before they can ensure “the
facilitation of [105] the associative
flow in the listener’s mind. We saw that this is determined to a large extent
by a subjective factor, the audience’s mental habitus.
A joke of a given geometrical pattern can be transposed into a number of
settings; the most effective of these will be the one which is most familiar to
the listener, which represents a ‘relevant stimulus’ to him…. This facilitation depends firstly on the choice of relevant
stimuli” (Koestler, Insight
and Outlook, p.29). However, the comic stimuli which
directly touch fundamental biological drives like sex, aggression or disgust
(scatological jokes), minimizing the local cultural elaborations of these
themes, can nevertheless have a universal validity, though they may be found
crude, childish or ‘uncultured.’ Bisociation allows for different ‘senses of
humor’ within a single comprehensive theory of humor.
Other Theories of Humor and the
Comic
Many well known definitions of the comic tacitly
acknowledge this bisociation, as interpreted in the light of Gurdjieff’s
theory, without however drawing the necessary conclusion of seeing therein the
very essence of the phenomenon. Thomas Carlyle defines humor as “sympathy with
the seamy side of things,” where sympathy would correspond to Gurdjieff’s ‘yes’
and ‘seamy’ to his ‘no.’ The inadequacy of this definition is that it appears
to exclude the converse: “antipathy to the alluring side of things.” In other
words, it appears to make the ‘yes’ a subjective attitude and ‘no’ an objective
aspect of the thing, whereas both are equally reactions, however deeply rooted
they may be in the human organism. [106]
Bergson
This is why Bergson’s contrary formulation, that the comic response demands that we suppress our sympathies, appears to be no less true than Carlyle’s formula. There must be, in Bergson’s phrase a “momentary anesthesia of the heart.” Where, as with the crippled man, we cannot suppress our sympathies, there will be no laughter. The writer of comedy realizes this and plays down our sympathy for the individual; he engages our intelligence rather than our emotions and, thus, achieves the necessary anesthesia.8 This has the merit of pointing out that it is impossible to laugh at someone with whom we identify completely. But neither will there be any laughter if “suppression of sympathy” meant mere indifference or antipathy pure and simple; moreover, there is no justification for considering the ‘suppression’ to be purely ‘intellectual’ and the ‘sympathy’ to be wholly ‘emotional.’ What the “playing down of sympathy” implies is a ‘half-sympathy,’ that is, the simultaneous evocation of sympathy and antipathy, of ‘suppression’ and ‘release’ (détente). As we [107] shall see later (pp.318-20), Bergson himself was uncomfortably aware of this sympathetic pole but, being unable to reconcile it with the pre-eminently social function he attributes to laughter as a corrective of individual behavior that is mechanically deviant, he tries his utmost to minimize this participative pole of the comic perception. In our eyes, it would be inadequate to speak of ‘sympathy’ and ‘suppression’ for they would seem to imply that in the comic bisociation the emotional attitudes are necessarily subject to conscious judgment and control on the part of the laugher. Very often, as in Freud’s category of ‘tendency-wit,’ the joke technique allows the release of normally repressed emotions which are immediately discharged as laughter due to their clash with the reassertion of inhibitions built into us by society (see below, for this reinterpretation of Freud’s category). Here, it is not really a question of conscious ‘sympathy’ but a fleeting, more or less unconscious, identification with the forbidden theme. Similarly, we shall have occasion to analyze some jokes and examples of hâsya-rasa (‘humor’), where the emotional bisociation is due to our perceiving the same set of comic stimuli through simultaneously identifying ourselves with the mutually contradicting viewpoints of two different protagonists.
This is also the case with the quiproquo which Bergson rightly insists on treating as only a particular instance of “mutual interference of independent series.”9 “We [108] oscillate between the possible meaning and the real meaning; and it is this balancing of our mind between two opposed interpretations that appears first of all in the amusement that the quiproquo gives us. It is understandable that certain philosophers have been especially struck by this balancing, and some have seen the very essence of the comic in a shock, or in the superposition, of two judgments that contradict each other” (Bergson, Rire, p.74). In these cases, it is improper to speak of ‘suppressing’ our sympathies with any one of them, for without this double sympathy there would be no humor: all that happens is that we also sympathize with a conflicting viewpoint and are unable to reconcile the two. To sympathize with a person is only one possible, though common, way of evoking an emotional attitude, but in many comic situations (see chapter IV), the stimulus, often inanimate, directly evokes the opposing emotions without any sympathy or the absence of it being involved. It is because Bergson has wholly ignored such examples of laughter based primarily on the ‘emotional center’ that he has been able to claim that “laughter has no greater enemy than emotion” (op. cit., p.3), whereas this is only true of those emotions not comprised within the bisociated stimulus but deriving from the purely subjective attitude of the recipient (as for example, in the resistance to tendency-jokes directed against oneself or one’s class). ‘Sympathy’ is an appropriate term only where the [109] bisociation depends on partial identification (tanmayîbhavana) with someone else (âzraya).
Though Bergson has analyzed a wide variety of methods for fabricating the comic, he insists o