by Amber Trotter, Psy.D.

ON WIT AND ITS RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS

We all have limits. Breaking points. Some people, or so I’m told, never really get to know theirs. I’ve had ample opportunity. The last one involved a shattered humerus, which sounds like humorous, but it wasn’t funny. It was the final straw, the breaking point, in a series of unfortunate events. I lay in bed, twisted in pain, full of my own suffering. A friend called, enumerating all the things I could now learn to do with my left hand. I laughed. It occurred to me that unconsciously, I worried I had forgotten how. A different kind of breaking point. A lifting point. 

November 8, 2016: Donald Trump is elected President. Good, I thought, I hope we’ve hit some sort of bottom—a breaking lifting point. But things keep getting worse. I fight for the silver linings. I really do. But let’s not delude ourselves. It's madness all around. 

Last month, for fun, I read Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious. Freud wonders about the function of humor. We all know the reductive, well, Freudian bit. Humor allows us to discharge the sexual and aggressive impulses we otherwise repress. Wit serves as a release valve, with a built-in defense: I was only joking! Wit reveals and conceals truth simultaneously. There is always ambiguity, multiple interpretations.  

Yet wit is also so much more. Humor is a creative skill, a sort of sublimation that allows us to survive the unsurvivable. It’s a form of libidinal play unto itself, often pleasurably bonding us to others. Thankfully, I have a brother. When we were small and my father was big and utterly terrifying, we giggled, slyly, when he wasn’t looking, and this created just enough distance to survive. His rage was no laughing matter, but it was also really funny. Humor is of course a defense, but it’s a damn good one. I have found it necessary. It shrinks everything, including me, down to size, offering a breakout from otherwise overwhelming experience. When we cannot laugh, when we lose our sense of humor, we lose that perspective, its distance and humility. 

I read Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious for fun, but also, I imagine, unconsciously, to help me survive these trying times. Just bearing witness from a relatively privileged perspective has become painful. I thought about Freud, and all the suffering he witnessed and experienced directly. His sense of humor sparkles.  

The contemporary left appears to have lost its sense of humor. Political correctness has metastasized into a cancel culture with one proper position, uniformly unfunny. Even comedians in liberal places are now forced to sign waivers pledging not to say anything offensive. We cannot laugh at the right, because that would indicate not taking its horrors sufficiently seriously. We cannot laugh at ourselves because we are engaged in trench warfare with that horror; if we laughed at ourselves, we might cede ground. This situation creates a lot of pressure. We have to fortify ourselves and correctness constantly. Any slip up spells danger and must be quashed. There is no time for ambiguity, no room for humility. The unsurvivable looms everywhere.  

Of course, there’s a dialectic here. It’s vital to confront reality on its own deadly terms. Yet reprieve is also necessary. Laughter can help transform breaking points into lifting ones, for a moment shifting our perspective, allowing us to float above it all for a precious moment. Wit, especially as a relational provision, can truly lessen suffering. 

Once, my therapist told me I should take myself more seriously. The next session, I asked him if he had said more, or less—I couldn’t remember—and we both laughed.