Lipton’s Journal/December 8, 1954/12

On should always try to think of the reasons behind laughter, because we always laugh at the things which truly frighten us the most. We laugh in order to conceal from ourselves the essential horror of the subject. So we laugh for example at a person who will act like a machine in response to a given stimulus—Blanche K. for example rising to the stimulus of Jack G.—but it is horrible that we are so bound, so mechanical, and the laughter is to keep ourselves from recognizing that.