[3] In Freud's view, jokes (the verbal and interpersonal form of humor) happened when the conscious allowed the expression of thoughts that society usually suppressed or forbade.
[4] Freud also regarded jokes as comparable to dreams, insofar as he deemed both processes to involve a release of desires and impulses that are typically repressed by the conscience.
[2] The commanding superego would impede the ego from seeking pleasure for the id, or to momentarily adapt itself to the demands of reality,[2] a mature coping method.
Moreover, Freud (1960)[3] followed Herbert Spencer's ideas of energy being conserved, bottled up, and then released like so much steam venting to avoid an explosion.
William Shakespeare’s Falstaff would be an example of Freud's "comic," generating laughter by expressing previously repressed inhibition.
[10] Of the types of humor found by McCullough and Taylor,[10] three categories correspond with Freud's grouping of tendentious (aggression and sexual) and non-tendentious (nonsense) wit.