Folkloric Manifestation of Primitive Impulses: Folk Riddles

Abstract

It is known that factors stemming from human nature play an active role in the emergence of riddles, which are one of the oral products. It is obvious that the riddle as a genre, which is thought to have been born and developed for purposes such as having fun, having a good time, arousing curiosity, and solving the unknown, has deep traces of the psychological structure of the human being. In this study, the effect of basic impulses on riddles is discussed with different dimensions. The research is based on document analysis and it was conducted on Turkish riddles that were established with obscene associations with a decent answer, creating a threatening perception and containing insult and cursing, and the samples belonging to the genre were analyzed from a psychoanalytic perspective. At the end of the study, some inferences were made such as the one to the effect that sexuality and aggression impulses can be satisfied without being subjected to any censorship thanks to the peculiar structure and characteristics of riddles.