Buried in the Endnotes, part 1: Freud's two theories of humor

This entry could also be entitled the Theory of Humor Series, part 24.

This blog post serves two purposes. First, because readers often do not study the endnotes to a paper, I want to highlight information buried in the endnotes. Second, the idea discussed here was actually someone else's idea, and I did not properly attribute the idea in the paper.

In my new paper, just published as a book chapter in Theology and Geometry: Essays on John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, I mention Freud's "first theory of humor." In the endnote I explain that Freud over his long career had come up with two contradictory theories of humor. Here is the endnote:

Freud’s first theory of humor, originally published in 1905, deals with the release of desires from the id that were forbidden by the superego, and it is found in Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (New York: Norton, 1963). His second theory of humor, originally published in 1928, sees humor as a tool used by the superego to help the ego deal with stress. See Sigmund Freud, “On Humour,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, v. 21, ed. Anna Freud and James Strachey. (London: Hogarth Press, 1961), 160-166.

Freud's first theory of humor is well known, as it had an entire book devoted to it, and it was published early in his career. But he did have a second one, which gives an entirely different explanation for humor. I would argue that my own theory of humor is simpler and can accommodate both of them.

Further point: Sometimes scholars will fail to give credit to the source through which they came upon a fact or idea. I may learn of a fact from a text, let's call it B. B cited the original source, let's call it A. When I publish the fact in my own paper, let's call it C, I may cite its origin in A without mentioning that I learned of it from B.

An example of bypassing attribution can be found in the biography of Isaac Newton. He first developed infinitesimal calculus using concepts and techniques from Rene Descartes's algebraic geometry. But when he went to publish, Descartes had a reputation for atheism, so Newton restructured the proofs of the fundamental components of calculus using the more awkward classical geometry. Descartes's influence was erased from the proofs.

With regard to Freud's two theories, I also made a bypass. I learned of the two theories from the book Bevis, Matthew. Comedy: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP, 2013. I did not even include that book in my bibliography. Instead, I cited the original texts by Freud. This omission is worse than failing to show the path of the idea. Noticing that Freud had two theories may have been an original observation by Bevis. My apologies to Matthew Bevis for not crediting him for the idea. He does deserve the credit (unless he took it unattributed from someone else).