Oral Deprivation, Envy, and the Sadistic Aspects of the Ego

Melanie Klein (1957, 181) writes, “Greed is an impetuous and insatiable craving, exceeding what the subject needs and what the object is able and willing to give. At the unconscious level, greed aims primarily at completely scooping out, sucking dry, and devouring the breast; that is to say, its aim is destructive introjection; whereas envy not only seeks to rob in this way, but also to put badness, primarily bad excrements and bad parts of the self, into the mother, and first of all into her breast, in order to spoil and destroy her. In the deepest sense this means destroying her creativity.”

Certain patients want only to be given to and deeply resent having to give anything back to the analyst. Their whole way of relating to life seems shaped by envy and feelings of deprivation. These patients seem emotionally ravenous and determined to raid the analyst's emotional resources. At the same time, they refuse to let you treat them because they perceive analysis as submission to a controlling persecutor. They want to hold the power in the relationship and they often demand answers, pills, insight, or cure without wanting to work for it. While they typically do not know what the pills or cure would consist of, they simply want whatever the analyst has to offer. At the same time, the fear of becoming emotionally vulnerable and the worry of becoming the analyst's property drives them to erect fairly intractable defences. There is a vicious cycle in which, as Klein describes, the ego wants all