From laughter in Freud until the physiological explanation of Spencer

Abstract

Among the many theories developed by respected thinkerswho worried about the laugh and the comic, and its relationship with the thought, one can observe different attempts to explain this matter. However, despire some imporrant contributions, those atternpts were insufficient to establish a consistent theoretical basis of such an enigmatic problem. From the XIX Century, eminent authors, suchas Herbert Spencer, in Physiology the Laugh, have conrribured to the development of the aspects related to the laugh, comic and its relationship with the thoughr. We have interest in this essay because it is a landmark to an end of a theoretic tradition that placed the passionas the cause of the laugh. By this means, we will find in this author an explanation for the laugh phenomenon. We also will see the reason why Sigmund Freud felt compelled to change some of Spencer's ideas, in order to adapt to his own thinking stream. We will try through this paper to approximate those two authors, relating some of Spencer'sideas with some freudian definitions about the Witz.