ABSTRACT
In primitive cultures playful humor is a significant part of the social life of the community. Humor has become an established means of discharge of the partially repressed archaic drives among the people. The function of humor has been formalized in two types of institutions: the sacred or ritual clowning and joking relationships. The antics of the ritual clowns provoke laughter which enables the group to share freely in the violation of the most sacred taboos. A function of the ritual clown is to impersonate and satirize all the important figures of the community. The release from ego control of archaic impulses in the service of the pleasure principle is achieved, in a contagion of hilarious mirth, by regression to infantile or progressively more primitive stages of abandon. The anthropological literature provides many examples of every kind of sexual license and of the most primitively destructive oral and anal regression.
