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.
The aim of this study is to view countertransference responses to patients presenting with envy through an empirical lens within a psychoanalytic framework. Envy is a complicated and challenging emotion considered ubiquitous in human experience. However, no research has been conducted to understand psychotherapist/analyst identification and clinical judgments of envy. Envy literature is reviewed from psychoanalytic, social psychology, and empirical research perspectives. A negative view of patients presenting with envy is implied through the use of cases with severe levels of psychopathology (see, e.g., Klein 1957; Riviere 1935; Kernberg 1984; Lopez-Corvo 1995). The categories of situational (State) envy and trait (Schema) envy are identified and used in the study (Spillius 1993; Montaldi 1999).
The analog method of research is used to combine the richness of the psychoanalytic case study and the rigor of empirical methods. Eighty-four practicing clinical psychologists, half of them male and half female, responded to five written vignettes depicting psychotherapy sessions illustrating the themes of Impulsivity, Dependency, Shame, Schema Envy, and State Envy for identification. Measures used as indicators of countertransference include the Clinical Themes Rating Scale (CTRS) for identification of the themes and the Clinical