Humor, de-idealization and sublimation in psychoanalysis

Abstract

This article's main motivation is to demonstrate that the metapsychology of humor offers itself, in the Freudian work, as a paradigm from which we can understand the operations at work in the process of sublimation. Thus, we can notice that the associations between two traditional psychoanalytical problems - humor and sublimation - contribute to its explanation. The text emphasizes the process of de-idealization through humor - as well as the aspect of identification involved in its production -, the reference of dark humor to the condition of "orphan" which characterizes the modern individual, and the politics that accompany the announcement of an amusing word (and even the Witz in general). Finally, it demonstrates the affinity of humor to grotesque realism, widely analyzed by Mikhail Bakhtin, showing how, in enunciating humor, it is necessary to consider the role of joy, its driving force.