Concept
Gratitude
In Melanie Klein's late theory, the counterpart of envy. Gratitude is the capacity to take in and enjoy what is good, first the milk and love of the feeding breast, and to feel thankful toward the source it came from. Klein set it out in Envy and Gratitude (1957). She saw gratitude as an expression of the life instinct and of the capacity for love. Each experience of full enjoyment, met with gratitude, helps to build a secure good object within, the core of a stable ego. From it come trust, generosity, the wish to share what one has received, and later the capacity for reparation. Envy works against it by spoiling the good at its source. Klein distinguished true gratitude from a dutiful thankfulness that hides guilt or envy.
Read more- Introduced by
- Melanie Klein
- Key works
- 1
- Related
- Envy
introduced by
- Melanie Klein 1957 In Envy and Gratitude (1957) Klein makes gratitude a psychoanalytic concept: the capacity, grounded in a securely established good object, to enjoy what is received and to wish to give back.
opposes
- Envy 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.