Concept
Envy
In Melanie Klein's theory, the angry feeling that someone else has and enjoys something good, joined to the impulse to take it away or spoil it. Klein set it out in Envy and Gratitude (1957), expanded from a paper read at the Geneva congress of 1955. There she held that envy is at work from the start of life, aimed first at the feeding breast for the very goodness it gives and later at the parents' sexual union, and that it is in part an inborn expression of the death instinct, made worse by hardship. Unlike greed, which wants to have all of the good, envy attacks the good itself. Because it spoils the good object, envy confuses good and bad, disturbs the splitting on which early security rests, heightens persecution and guilt, and hinders the work of the depressive position. Klein set gratitude, an expression of love and of the life instinct, against it.
- Introduced by
- Melanie Klein
- Key works
- 3
- Related
introduced by
- Melanie Klein 1957 Klein first read the theory as 'A Study of Envy and Gratitude' at the Geneva congress in July 1955 and published it in expanded form as Envy and Gratitude (1957). Envy appears in her earlier work on the early Oedipus conflict, but here she makes primary envy of the good breast a concept of its own and pairs it with gratitude.
opposed by
- Gratitude 1957 Klein sets gratitude against envy: envy spoils the good object, while gratitude takes it in and builds on it. How strong each is decides whether the good object can be securely established.
gave rise to
- Attacks on linking 1959 Writing two years after Klein's Envy and Gratitude, Bion traces attacks on linking in part to an inborn excess of hate and envy. It is envy of the understanding breast, and of any creative coupling such as the parents' intercourse or the analytic pair at work, that drives the patient to spoil the link.