Envy arises from comparisons between oneself and others; the envious person feels they are not on the same level as others.
Envy can be explained as the sadness and desire to possess what belongs to someone else. The envious person does not only covet the object another may have but also the happiness and joy that person experiences.
Its cause is often linked to low self-esteem and deep insecurity. These are people who feel inadequate and dissatisfied with themselves. It also appears in those who have not managed to succeed in life and encounter people who have more than they do or who have achieved what they themselves could not. They feel inferior, selfish, and resentful as a result of a deficiency—whether real or imagined.
This feeling can be recognized when someone devalues another’s success, is overly critical, excessively competitive, and above all, constantly compares themselves to others. They often feel the need to be the center of attention and try to imitate the people they admire.
The envious person feels intense happiness at the failures of others. Because of this, we can affirm that envy can disrupt interpersonal relationships, often generating jealousy and resentment. Thus, we can conclude that the distortion caused by envy translates into great difficulty in relating to others.
On the other hand, envy can emerge from fear of facing oneself. It not only affects the person experiencing it but can also harm those around them. It is sometimes difficult to detect an envious person because they may present a friendly and kind attitude.
Types of Envy:
a) Benign
b) Malignant
These two types of envy trigger different behaviors and experiences.
Benign envy is when the envious person desires to improve themselves until they achieve and feel superior.
Malignant envy seeks to tear everything down, to place the envied person in an inferior situation. The person who experiences malignant envy feels deep frustration, hatred, and a desire to destroy, humiliate, and denigrate others.
Envy can lead to hostility, anger, depression, and anxiety. It may weaken the immune system and cause illnesses or conditions such as constipation, sleep or appetite disorders, fatigue, among others. These individuals are unable to look within themselves and appreciate their own worth and what they possess.
They may also attempt to isolate you, causing others to distance themselves from you.
Envy is a human emotion that can be controlled and even transformed into positive attitudes.
To Reduce Envy:
- Recognize these feelings and when they arise.
- Focus on yourself rather than others.
- Acknowledge your strengths and appreciate others’ successes.
- Genuinely try to rejoice in others’ achievements. Cultivate gratitude and focus on your own personal growth.
- Stop boasting about your personal accomplishments.
- Avoid making false compliments.
- Do not slander.
- Do not allow others to extinguish your positive feelings and ideas—especially not in public.
- Empathize with envious people, as they suffer greatly. You might be able to talk to them, and above all, do not take it personally: envy is not hatred toward others but rather hatred they feel toward themselves.
- Set boundaries and do not tolerate envious behaviors; in very severe cases, it may be necessary to distance yourself.
One author who studied the emotion of envy in depth was Melanie Klein. She stated that there is a primary envy that is fundamental in child development, especially during the stage of the relationship with the mother’s breast. This arises when the baby perceives they cannot obtain everything they want, at the moment they want it—particularly from the mother.
According to Klein, envy is related to anxiety, as it can intensify the child’s distress and cast doubt on the mother’s ability to provide gratification and protection.
Defense mechanisms to manage envy include projection and identification. Envy also manifests in what she called the paranoid-schizoid position. Here the child struggles with feelings of envy and aggression, which generally affect how they perceive others—and themselves.
Klein made highly valuable contributions to psychoanalysis. One of them was expanding the theory of envy, emphasizing its fundamental role in the development of personality, in the types of relationships one establishes with objects, in the development of pathology, in the nature of defenses erected, and even in the therapeutic process—envy has a significant impact.
For her, envy is:
“An oral-sadistic and anal-sadistic expression of destructive impulses, operating from the very beginning of life and rooted in constitution.”
Klein believed that out of envy, the baby attacks the first object relationship—namely the breast and the mother—not the “bad object” that harms, but the “good object” that is generous.
Donald Meltzer agreed with Klein that envy is a destructive attack on the good object and its qualities. While he did not rule out a constitutional basis, he also gave great weight to the environment in which the person was raised. An environment dominated by destructive envy may be a determining factor in someone becoming envious.
Meltzer distinguished two types of envy, as mentioned before: benign and malignant. Benign envy is tied to admiration and to gradually assimilating and accepting new ideas and experiences. Malignant envy, however, involves the desire to destroy these new experiences. Yet, once assimilated, this destructiveness can gradually turn into admiration, at which point envy becomes benign.
I believe envy is an emotion that remains present in the psyche throughout life. Depending on the individual’s personality and traits—such as their capacity to love, gratitude, kindness, tolerance for pain, and tolerance for uncertainty—envy may have greater or lesser impact on a person’s life. Very intense envy has significant repercussions on personality development.
Suffering generates hatred. A person does not envy those far away—in space, time, or level—but rather those close to them, whom they wish to rival or surpass. Hatred does not arise from envy but from anger. We may feel omnipotent hatred, a sense of entitlement to everything.
Envy serves to mask the fear of rejection. It is based on primitive desires and fantasies, rooted in the wish to erase everything that differentiates us from the maternal object. Envious fantasies act as a reservoir for the desire to become identical to the ideal object, to merge with it, and to satisfy narcissistic longings that generate hateful and vengeful feelings toward difference.
In narcissistic personalities, pathological envy is very common—as it is in psychopaths. These individuals feel deeply threatened and anxious about achieving success. They feel inferior, basing their self-esteem on others’ attention and approval. Like narcissists, envious people rely on appearances.
Meltzer also noted that envy plays a role in human sexuality. In adult sexuality, following the Oedipus complex, the individual may feel envy of the father’s vigorous penis. Yet the adult can take responsibility for such emotions—pain, frustration, rivalry toward the father—while being able to think through and process them. Thus, even if they feel envy, they may also feel admiration and respect, establishing a healthy internal relationship with the father. This is considered benign envy, as it does not seek to destroy the object but to resolve unfulfilled Oedipal desires.
Meltzer also described the perverse sexual state, in which envy is destructive, seeking above all to annihilate the good object, dominated by hatred. For this author, what matters most are not the acts themselves but the fantasies that prevail. This state reflects hatred toward creativity, harmony, beauty, and generosity of the primary scene, as well as toward good objects and their bonds.
Destructive envy generates confusion, turning good into bad and idealizing the bad. It undermines the ability to think, confuses truth with lies, values with ideals. The perverse subject, through violence, intrusively invades the object, taking possession of it and destroying its benevolent qualities.
In this perverse mental state, there is a direct attack on truth and knowledge, preferring lies over the mental pain that truth can cause. Here, envy predominates, seeking to annihilate anything that provokes persecutory or depressive anxiety, stripping all experience of emotional meaning.
Another author, Wilfred Bion, stated that envy primarily attacks the bond, especially the part that seeks growth. When envy is very intense, it can obstruct the processing of emotional experiences. If these are not worked through, the mind needs to expel them somehow, often through hallucinations or meaningless actions.
Envy even makes use of witchcraft as a tool for harm, potentially causing illnesses.
Both Bion and Klein believed that envy is a lifelong presence in the psyche. Depending on personality traits—capacity to love, gratitude, tolerance for pain—envy will have greater or lesser impact on an individual’s life.
Conclusion
We can conclude that envy has a constitutional basis but is also influenced by the environment. The envious subject attacks anyone who possesses something good to offer. Instead of seeking creativity, knowledge, truth, and development, these individuals pursue the opposite—seeking to triumph over others by attacking and corrupting them.
