which belongs to æsthetics, is subject to the same laws, shows the same mechanism, and serves the same tendencies as the other psychic productions. With his wonted profundity and ingenuity the author adds the solution of wit to those of the neuroses, dreams, and psychopathological acts. I take great pleasure in tendering my thanks to Mr. Horatio Winslow, who has read the manuscript and has given me valuable suggestions in the choice of expressions and in the selection of substitutes for those witticisms that could not be translated. A. A. BRILL. _May, 1916._ CONTENTS A. ANALYSIS OF WIT CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION 3 II. THE TECHNIQUE OF WIT 15 III. THE TENDENCIES OF WIT 127 B. SYNTHESIS OF WIT IV. THE PLEASURE MECHANISM AND THE PSYCHOGENESIS OF WIT 177 V. THE MOTIVES OF WIT AND WIT AS A SOCIAL PROCESS 214 C. THEORIES OF WIT VI. THE RELATION OF WIT TO DREAMS AND TO THE UNCONSCIOUS 249 VII. WIT AND THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE COMIC 288 A. ANALYSIS WIT AND ITS RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS I INTRODUCTION Whoever has had occasion to examine that part of the literature of æsthetics and psychology dealing with the nature and affinities of wit, will, no doubt, concede that our philosophical inquiries have not awarded to wit the important rôle that it plays in our mental life. One can recount only a small number of thinkers who have penetrated at all deeply into the problems of wit. To be sure, among the authors on wit one finds the illustrious names of the poet Jean Paul (Fr. Richter), and of the philosophers Th. Vischer, Kuno Fischer, and Th. Lipps. But even these writers put the subject of wit in the background while their chief interest centers around the more comprehensive and more alluring problems of the comic. In the main this literature gives the impression that it is altogether impractical to study wit except when treated as a part of the comic. _Presentation of the Subject by Other Authors_