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IN THIS PAPER I PROPOSE TO DEAL with the manoeuver by which people try to mitigate their envy by converting differences into similarities, leaving for themselves the far more possible task of merely getting or doing or being more of the same. These are people for whom the expression Vive la différence! most decidedly does not apply. For it to apply the differences they encounter must be and have been complementary, reciprocal: the one's hungry mouth—the other's providing breast; the one's excited genital—the other's also excited genital. Such mutuality of reciprocation enables the one to take and give pleasure from, and so in what he or she possesses. Where that complementation does not take place, the longing inverts toward a turn-about. Failing to find pleasure and satisfaction in what one has, one's longings to have what the other has increases proportionately. What is one's own is being wasted, and what the other has is wasted on them. First greed to have both and then envy of the other for having what one has longed to receive from and now longs to own and control comes to the fore. To have a mouth and an appetite for being fed and suckled when there is too little pleasure from leaves one with no great pleasure in. To have the breast thus seems preferable.
This goes for the genitals and more broadly the gender as well. Disappointment when having a penis must lead either to a change of object, aim or impulse. The wish one were rid of it contributes