What is envy?

Envy is not merely a reaction to the fact that another person possesses something desirable. It emerges as an affective dynamic aimed at the destruction of the very source of goodness, which is experienced as inaccessible to appropriation.

In the therapeutic situation, envy rarely appears in its direct form. It is masked as fear, mistrust, “realistic” caution, or as an intense devaluation of what is taking place between the patient and the therapist. It is precisely at these moments that the clinician encounters not simply resistance, but an active destruction of the relational space itself. In such situations, there is a serious clinical risk: to perceive envy exclusively as fear or as a consequence of traumatic experience, and to respond to it with excessive reassurance or support. Such a response often intensifies the destructiveness, because it fails to address the very core of the affect.

At this point, the therapist often finds themselves under the pressure of intense countertransference — ranging from feelings of ineffectiveness and devaluation to the temptation to “give more” or, conversely, to withdraw. These countertransference reactions are not accidental; they reflect deep processes through which envy acquires a destructive character and shifts into the domain of primitive hatred.

Primitive hatred also takes the form of an effort to destroy the potential for a gratifying human relationship and for learning something of value in that human interaction. 

Otto Kernberg, MD, believes that underlying this need to destroy reality and communication in intimate relationships is unconscious and conscious envy of the object, particularly of an object not dominated from within by similar hatred.

Clinically, this means that the very presence of a “good” object — one that is capable of containing, thinking, and not collapsing in response to aggression — may be intolerable for the patient.

In 1957 Melanie Klein first pointed to envy of the good object as a significant characteristic of patients with severe narcissistic psychopathology. Such envy is complicated by the patient's need to destroy his own awareness of it, lest his terror over the savagery of his hatred of what, au fond, he values in the object be exposed. 

This situation is often not consciously recognized and cannot be directly represented in the patient’s experience; instead, envy is enacted through attacks on the relationship, on meaning, and on the very possibility of receiving something valuable from another.

According to Otto Kernberg,behind the envy of the object and the need to destroy and spoil anything good that might come from contacts with it lies unconscious identification with the originally hated-and-needed object. Envy may be considered both a source of a primitive form of hatred, intimately linked with oral aggression, greed, and voracity, and a complication of the hatred that derives from fixation to trauma. 

In this sense, envy not only precedes hatred, but also sustains it, trapping the patient in a cycle of destruction that could otherwise serve as a basis for recovery and development. That is why recognizing envy toward a positive object is key to understanding those clinical situations in which therapeutic contact is destroyed not because of a lack of support, but because of its presence.

It is precisely at these clinical points—where envy attacks the bond, and hatred disguises itself as rationality, emotional detachment, or a “realistic” position—that the therapist encounters one of the most difficult tasks of psychotherapeutic work. What is at stake is not merely maintaining contact, but the capacity to recognize, tolerate, and think through those affective dynamics that are directed toward destroying the very space of the relationship and the possibility of receiving something valuable from the Other.

Work with envy, primitive hatred, and aggression toward the “good” object requires not intuitive reactions, but a clear theoretical framework and clinical technique that allow the therapist neither to become drawn into destructive transference scenarios nor to avoid them. It is precisely here that a deep understanding becomes critically important: how Love and Aggression coexist within the same object relationship; how envy can simultaneously conceal a need for dependence and destroy it; and why attempts to “eliminate” aggression so often only intensify pathological dynamics.

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(c) Yuliia Holopiorova,

Ukrainian Association of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy

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