are essentially pre- or nonverbal images of objects, are associated with the primary processes, and are not necessarily connected with reality (Rycroft, 1995; Gibeault, 2005a, 2005b; Lanteri-Laura, 2005b). The influence of the external world on the ego is apparent here in that mental processes and word-presentations become connected only gradually as the ego differentiates from the id as a result of contact with the environment (Rycroft, 1995; Freud, 1923). The idea of thing vs. word-presentations is also evident in Freud's hypotheses concerning schizophrenia (Rycroft, 1995; Freud, 1894, 1896). It is suggested that, as a defense against intrapsychic conflict, schizophrenics divest thing-presentations of significance and come to treat word-presentations as actual things (cf. mental functioning in Piaget's preoperational stage of cognitive development). Parapraxes, jokes The parapraxes (e.g., slips of the tongue and pen) and humor were two other areas related to language that Freud investigated. He conceptualized speech errors as discrepancies between what a speaker intended to say and what he or she actually said, indicating that the intention was unconscious and prevented from being expressed accurately due to intrapsychic conflict (Freud, 1901). In terms of humor, Freud (1905) believed that jokes were an innocuous way of expressing sexual and/or aggressive impulses and easing psychic tension, thereby producing a degree of pleasure. Like dreams and neurotic symptoms, jokes serve as compromise-formations and are indicative of many of the same fundamental processes characteristic of the unconscious, e.g., condensation and displacement. However, unlike dreams and symptoms, jokes occur in an inter- rather than intrapersonal context and are dependent on the listener's ability to discern the ways in which the sense of the joke has been distorted through the condensation of words, multiple use of the same words or phrases, and the double meaning of words (cf. Paul Grice's cooperative principle, cf. also Ephratt 2004). The humorous quality of the following joke by Viennese journalist Daniel Spitzer is the result of simple phrase rearrangement: In this joke, we see multiple use of the same phrase with words in a different order, as well as the double meaning of the words "lay" and "lain." Ostensibly about a couple's financial status, this joke is effective because it allows for the overcoming of inhibition and the indirect expression of sexual impulses through the double meaning of words. Psychoanalysis and psycholinguistics Over the past half century, there have been efforts by psychoanalysts and cognitive psychologists to bridge the