Envy and Gratitude Revisited

Alessandra Lemma, Priscilla Roth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429913310
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

These stimulating essays are evidence that 50 years after its publication Melanie Klein's Envy and Gratitude is still a rich source of psychoanalytic inspiration. Sixteen highly regarded analysts, representing a wide range of psychoanalytic thinking, provide new insights and highlight current developments without avoiding the controversies that surround the original publication. The clinical and literary material is engaging and illustrates the effect of theory on practice and the influence of practice on the evolution of theory.Contents: Foreword - R. Horacio EtchegoyenIntroduction - Priscilla Roth1) "Even now, now, very now..." On envy and the hatred of love - Ignes Sodre2) Envy, narcissism, and the destructive instinct - Robert Caper3) Envy and Gratitude: some current reflections - H. Shmuel Erlich4) An independent response to Envy and Gratitude - Caroline Polmear5) On gratitude - Edna O'Shaughnessy6) Keeping envy in mind: the vicissitudes of envy in adolescent motherhood - Alessandra Lemma7) Envy in Western society: today and tomorrow - Florence Guignard8) He thinks himself impaired: the pathologically envious personality - Ronald Britton9)

1
“Even now, now, very now ...” On envy and the hatred of love

Ignês Sodré

Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise!

Othello (I.i.88–89)

Sight hateful, sight tormenting! Thus these two
Imparadised in one another’s arms
The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill
Of bliss on bliss, while I to hell am thrust.

Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV, v. 505–508 (1975, p. 99)

Othello, Shakespeare’s great tragedy of domestic violence, provides the most powerful example in literature of how destructive envy involves a triangular situation in which the envious self is the tormented outsider and consists in an attack the aim of which is to obliterate love itself. For Iago, the sight of love between two people is so unbearable, so utterly tormenting, that it must not be allowed to exist in his mind. To prevent it, he must constantly debase it by creating an obscene—to him exciting rather than tormenting—version of intercourse, which must also be projected into the lover’s mind. Othello is tormented by delusional sexual jealousy that is fuelled by Iago’s constant pornographic projections; his love turns into hatred, and he commits murder. But Shakespeare’s beautiful play ultimately shows us what Othello’s profound despair is about: it is the idea of goodness itself, of love, being not only lost forever but felt as never having really existed, that causes his descent into madness.

In this chapter I address the question of triangularity in envy. I examine the centrality of the most primitive version of the primal scene, the involvement of jealousy in the unconscious envious attack, the role of what Klein calls early genitalization as a defence against primitive envy, and the question of what is the ultimate object of envy, which, I think, is love itself. To illustrate these points, I use as an example Shakespeare’s extraordinary portrayal of the functioning of Iago’s mind.

Envy and triangularity

Klein’s Envy and Gratitude, postulating the importance of envy as a manifestation of the destructive instinct, caused a controversy that continues to this day. It is a work of great complexity, and many of its insights have become definitive for the understanding of the mind. Klein says that “Envy is a most potent factor in undermining feelings of love and gratitude at their root, since it affects the earliest relation of all, that to the mother” (Klein, 1957, p. 176). And: “I consider that envy is an oral-sadistic and anal-sadistic expression of destructive impulses, operative from the beginning of life, and that it has a constitutional basis” (p. 176). These ideas, derived from the concept of the death instinct, inevitably cause a resistance: it is painful to conceive of an inborn wish to destroy what is good because of—rather than in spite of—its goodness. Klein saw evidence of such destructiveness in her clinical work with adults and with children and emphasized this in her published work. She also emphasized—a fact that is perhaps not sufficiently taken into consideration in controversial debates—the amount of suffering that these destructive states of mind cause in its subject, and her belief that this acute suffering could be diminished through interpretation. Interpretation of envy was meant to alleviate mental suffering by leading to greater integration and a strengthening of the ego—though, of course, insight connected to having to acknowledge in oneself a wish to attack goodness cannot but be extremely painful. (Somehow the need to make the point about envy being an essential part of human nature led to an overuse of the words “innate” and “constitutional” attached to envy, in a way that I think became unhelpful—as if an extra condemnation were attached to it: after all, we don’t talk of innate jealousy or innate Oedipus complex—we just assume that these are all part of human nature. The conflicting emotions we are all born with are, as most analysts would agree, love and hate; what is controversial is the question of destructiveness—as opposed to aggression.)

The theoretical question of whether envy always involves a primitive form of triangularity to some extent is a complex one. In the case of little Erna, first described in 1924, Melanie Klein (1932) places great importance on oral envy of the primal scene. Erna’s experience of being tormented by the primal scene is central to her psychopathology: “her oral envy of the genital and oral gratifications which she supposed her parents to be enjoying during intercourse proved to be the deepest foundation of her hatred” (1932, p. 46) Erna believed that any expression of her mother’s tenderness towards her father had one chief purpose, which was to arouse the child’s envy and to wound its feelings” (p. 39); and when she played at being the mother herself, she made it clear that “tenderness was a pretence” (p. 46).

Petot (1993), in his scholarly exposition of Klein’s theory, does an excellent job of disentangling the various changes and developments in the theory of envy since 1928, which culminates in Envy and Gratitude; although there is no space here to describe this, for the purpose of this chapter it is important to keep in mind that for Klein “envy is born of the gap between the greedy expectation accompanying the fantasy of an inexhaustible breast, and reality, which inevitably brings deprivation” (Petot, 1993, p. 212). The envious attack has at its aim to suppress “inside and through omnipotent phantasies the intolerable goodness of the frustrating breast” (p. 215; emphasis added).

[E]nvy relates to a dyadic situation, whereas jealousy can appear only in a relationship involving the subject and two objects. Envy, then, appears earlier than this triangular situation, as the latter is the condition of the transformation of envy into jealousy. But the Kleinian notion of envy is inseparable from an early form of the triangular situation, one which concerns not relations between two objects, but conflict with the object that is centered on a third thing. [Petot, 1993, p. 217; emphasis added]

This third thing is an imaginary part object, a constant inside mother (father’s penis). Linking this to combined parents doesn’t change this significantly: this is about the two parents combined, enjoying themselves and their contents, depriving the child. But, to start with, “it is because the relationship with the breast is already triangular in a certain sense that the feeling of frustration can arise at all” (p. 219).

This triangulation is discussed by Riviere in her 1932 paper in which she analyses a pathologically jealous patient’s “dominant phantasy”:

this consisted of an impulse or an act on the patient’s part of seizing and obtaining from some other person something she greatly desired, thus robbing and despoiling him or her. In her phantasy such an act or impulse presupposed a “triangular situation”; if not necessarily in the sense that two other persons besides herself were required to fulfil its terms, at least two objects were essential in it. (Both objects might be persons or one might not be). [Riviere, 1932, p. 107]

The “search” or the “loss” [of love] can be traced back to oral envy and to the deprivation of the breast or the father’s penis (as an oral object). . . . This . . . [is the] basis for the acute and desperate sense of lack and loss, of dire need, of emptiness and desolation felt by the jealous one in the triangle. [p. 112]

How can one conceptualize the most primitive form of envy, how can one imagine the infant in that state of mind? Petot points out that the concept of innate envy appears in relation to the idea of the preconception of a good breast (something that exists as a given, to satisfy all needs and desires): “Melanie Klein affirms that the infant suspects the breast of keeping for itself its milk and its love, but she never troubles to account for the formation of this belief” (Petot, 1993, p. 217). He thinks that the idea is that, unlike with other versions of the breast, this belief happens without projection. This does not really seem possible—a breast that keeps it all to itself is necessarily bad and must be created by the projection of the infant’s possessiveness. I suspect that the lack of clarity about the conceptualization of this process was part of the need to make envy “purer” of influence from experience and therefore more fit to be the main representative of destructiveness. I don’t think this works, though. The only way I can imagine this is to suppose that envy appears the moment a sense of separateness appears, and up to that moment breast and baby are the same; when there is a sense of baby looking from the outside, then it is possible to imagine a goodness as belonging to the breast and not to the baby. I think that may be the moment in which the breast ceases to be goodness and becomes something that has goodness, as a possession. (Only then can it conceivably “keep it all to itself”). At this moment, then, love stops being a total state of endless bliss and becomes a substance (a “third”) that flows between one person and the other. At this moment, generosity can exist, and gratitude, and envy, and jealousy too.

Love (like milk) is always something fluid, flowing from one person to the other, forming a live link between two; it is this link that, seen by the envious third, is unbearable and must therefore be enviously debased. What Petot (1993) calls “the intolerable goodness of the breast” must fundamentally be not only its riches but its generosity: the willingness to part with these riches must connect to the belief that the breast will be continuously replenished. The mother/analyst/breast can give generously because they contain their own internal object, which is endlessly supplying them with goodness. The supply is also inexhaustible (in this version of things) because of the mutuality of love between mother and baby: it is the baby’s sucking that creates more milk, it is gratitude that creates generosity, not just generosity that creates gratitude. The separated/separate baby, in an envious/jealous state of mind, cannot maintain in his internal world a continuity in time of the good feeding experience; a rupture with that—caused by faulty introjection or by unbearable frustration/deprivation—creates a state of mind in which the self as the loved-baby-at-the-breast is perceived as another baby; so the link between mother and baby needs to be attacked, as it provokes unbearable envy and jealousy. A vicious circle is established, because the more the excluded envious part of the self attacks the couple baby-at-the-breast and mother, the more unlovable it feels and the greater the despair about the survival of love.

What is preserved in an idealized form as perfect love is not necessarily just oral—although the life-giving union of nipple–mouth is its most powerful link. Klein, of course, believed that what is longed for as the ideal state is that of the baby in the womb—and that this loss can be accepted only through the introjection of the good breast: “the infant who was first inside the mother now has the mother inside himself” (1957, p. 178). This is symbolized by the experience at the breast, with the milk filling the baby up, creating contentment and gratitude; what we call “good breast” stands for the total experience, which includes the mother’s arms, the warmth of her skin, her eyes and smile, her voice, and so on. (I don’t think the breast here should be called part-object; I don’t believe “part-object” is at all a good description: if the baby relates just to the breast, it is because breast and mother are the same. I think part-object should be reserved for something that is the product of splitting, not for the original object of love and desire; splitting of a part from the whole, and of course splitting of good—that which I invest with love, and experience as loving—and bad—that which I invest with hatred, and experience as hating.)

When love given to another—even when the “another” is oneself a moment ago, before separation or before the realization of separateness—is a “sight tormenting”, envy must destroy it by making it not exist: the mind’s eye will be prevented from seeing it, contemplating it as this greatest good to which the self has no access now—and will, therefore, never have. As we know, these states of mind are felt to be forever. It is the growing capacity to experience the continuity of good experience in the mind—when the satisfying experience is felt to be going on existing in the internal world (which is what gratitude means)—that will ensure that destructive envy will not be stirred up in such a way; it is the forever-ness of the loss, the unbearability of separateness as opposed to the temporality of separation, that creates the eternal now-ness of the primal scene. With development, separation will be felt to imply temporary loss; the loss becomes total in the case of the death of the object, or if the object is felt to be entirely possessed by another. What cannot be “cured” in further development is separateness—its existence as a fact of life can only be warded off by delusion. Although the experience of falling in love—with a lover, or with a new baby, or with one’s mother, the bliss-on-bliss merging of the experience of all-encompassing love of “imparadised in each other’s arms” (see Milton quote above)—is an illusion that has the intensity of truth, we know it is a passing stage. At best, idealization will be succeeded by lasting ordinary goodness. The establishment of an internal sense of continuity of time, which ensures a continuity of identity, is an essential development that both fosters and is confirmed by the advent of the depressive position: the experience of separation and of separateness is only bearable if the frustrated baby is able to know that the contented baby-at-the-breast was himself in the past and therefore can be himself in the future. Joan Riviere says that everything starts with a comparison:

For as soon as the need for much is strong, comparisons have begun to enter in. Now a comparison between ourselves and others is no primary, simple situation in itself. It is, however, a more developed and complicated version of the primary situation I described earlier, when the baby feels the difference between pleasant good states of well-being in itself and painful dangerous feelings and states. All comparisons began with that comparison. [Riviere, “Public Lectures”, 1937, p. 184]

The same experience can be felt as: the breast has been given to another (thus rage, envy, persecution); or it was mine and I lost it (sadness, guilt, pining); at best, I will have it again (= I am still loved).

Envy and the negative therapeutic reaction

From a conceptual point of view, the change from “the breast is goodness” to “the breast has goodness” (which it may keep all for itself) is already a form of triangularity—both in terms of goodness becoming the third thing and in terms of mother having herself as her love object. When trying to isolate envy, specifically, as an object of clinical study, we could think schematically of various triangular configurations, in which the self can experience being the excluded third watching some form of the primal scene. All these provoke psychic suffering, giving rise to various painful affects and causing various defensive manoeuvres. In the consulting room, we see these most clearly in negative therapeutic reactions, which happen often in minimal ways, though sometimes more dramatically creating a therapeutic impasse. In some patients, serial negative therapeutic reactions seem to become a way of life—which we must therefore understand as their only way to survive psychically.

Here are various possible triangles:

1. The binary “the breast is goodness” becomes the triangular “the breast has goodness” and “keeps it for itself”—for example, the analyst who is, or is felt to be, narcissistically invested in the therapeutic success.
2. The mother feeds the baby because she is fed by her internal object (breast, penis); one negative version of this is the analyst too wedded to theory.
3. The baby eternally witnessing part object parental oral intercourse—the analyst seen as excited by his own ideas.
4. The baby observing himself at the breast can’t tolerate separateness and envies baby and breast together; this manifests as a difficulty in allowing analyst to enjoy working with the patient and a sense of unfairness that “it is all so easy for the analyst”.
5. The frustrated, separated baby observes and finds intolerable the sight of himself at the breast, loses the continuity in time of baby-at-the-breast was me a moment ago with the present state of baby-not-at-the-breast self, and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• PSYCHOANALYTIC IDEAS AND APPLICATIONS SERIES
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
• FOREWORD
• Introduction
• 1 "Even now, now, very now ..." On envy and the hatred of love
• 2 Envy, narcissism, and the destructive instinct
• 3 Envy and Gratitude: some current reflections
• 4 An independent response to Envy and Gratitude
• 5 On gratitude
• 6 Keeping envy in mind: the vicissitudes of envy in adolescent motherhood
• 7 Envy in Western society: today and tomorrow
• 8 He thinks himself impaired: the pathologically envious personality
• 9 The repetition compulsion, envy, and the death instinct
• 10 Romantic perversion: the role of envy in the creation of a timeless universe
• 11 Envy and the negative therapeutic reaction
• 12 Reflections on Envy and Gratitude
• 13 Being envious of envy and gratitude
• 14 Vicious circles of envy and punishment
• REFERENCES
• INDEX