You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Date: February 27, 2014
In a packed auditorium we welcomed Kenneth Winarick, Ph.D., Senior Faculty, Training and Supervising Analyst, former Director of Training of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, to present his paper, “Psychoanalytic Pluralism through the Lens of Envy and Narcissism”. This illuminating paper draws on the theories of Klein, Kernberg and Horney to understand the relationship between envy and narcissistic character structure. However, rather than focusing attention solely on differences, of which, yes, there are many, Winarick focuses on connectivity, the ways in which these theories intersect and may subsequently expand our clinical understanding.
Klein, Kernberg and Horney agree that envy and destructive fantasies are the “fertile ground” from which narcissistic pathology develops. The difference is the “nature of the fertile ground”. Klein's emphasis was on innate oral aggression, originally directed inward, toward the self and then ultimately directed outward toward other objects experienced as having the love so desired and longed for by the individual. Horney understands envy as reactive, a byproduct of destructive and traumatic interpersonal experiences beginning in early childhood. Horney identified “the child's lurking sense of hypocrisy in the environment his feelings that his parents love, honesty and generosity … may only be a pretense” as a significant aspect of this early traumatic experience. The difference here then is between Klein and Kernberg's emphasis on the internal experience and Horney's emphasis on external experiences. While this is a meaningful difference, Winarick explains that perhaps there is a more connective way of understanding these perspectives. He cites modern Kleinian, Bott Sphillius, who elaborated on the relationship between the “giver and taker” and how envy is likely to be exacerbated in the receiver if the giver is hostile, inconsistent and/or resentful, much like Horney's description of the hypocriti