Not only does humor seek to obtain pleasure from an attack on others and thus to feel superior or to compensate for inferiority, but also it reaches its highest form in exposing man himself, including the humorist. The humorist, seeking his own weaknesses and contradictions, his falsities, strips the disguise from himself in some surprising way. Bergson points out that to strip away a disguise is naturely humorous unless it reveals too rudely the horrible. The humorist takes off the mask from himself and others, and in so far as we can detach ourselves from pride and vanity, we laugh. The one who cannot thus detach himself is "hurt" by humor; the one who somehow has become a spectator of his own strivings can laugh at himself. Thus humor, in addition to becoming a compensation and a form of entertainment, is a form of self-revelation and self-understanding carried on by a peculiar technique. On the whole this technique depends upon a hiding of the real meaning of the story or situation under a disguise of the commonplace. The humorist phrases his words or develops his situation so as to send the thoughts of the listener flying in several directions. There is a brief confusion, an incongruity is felt, then suddenly from under a disguise the point becomes clear and the laugh is in part one of triumph, in part one of pleased surprise. I shall not attempt an analysis of the psychology of humor, for illustrious writers and thinkers have stubbed their intellectual toes on this rock for centuries. In later years the analyses of Freud and Bergson are noted, but there is a list of writers from Aristotle down whose remarks and observations have brought out clearly certain trends. For us the direction that any one's humor takes is a very important phase in the study of character. Humor is a weapon, and the humorist has two ends in view: the one to please his audience and to align them on his side, the second to attack either playfully or seriously some person or institution with the technique of humor. Certain trends are seen in humor, one to seek a feeling of superiority by revealing the inferiority of others in a surprising way, another to release a burdensome[1] inhibition, a third to play with and in a sense mock the disagreeable features of life, and the fourth to seek detachment from one's self, to seek relief from sorrow, disappointment and deprivation by viewing the self as from afar. [1] In this way humor is an effort for freedom; through humor one tastes of experiences otherwise forbidden.