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IN THE PRECEEDING SEGMENTS of this series, 1 I have dealt with envy as an outgrowth of ideas and feelings consequent upon the infant's discovery of the need to make choices among potential relationships with his or her objects (including the self as object). When, as in infancy, greed is part of the prevailing state of mind, any realization of an actuality out of the reservior of potential choices proves to be an infuriating and outraging one—insofar as the individual is not convinced that choosing is necessary. In this paper I will develop the reason for such ideas and feelings and show that the same attitude regarding choice and choosing holds true of the choices the other makes in respect to the self. That a child is being chosen can import associative resonance from Freud's (1919) paper of a similar name.
Regarding relationships, I have particularized two fundamental states of mind—one, the COUPLE, following from and embodying the pleasure principle and involving the discovery and use of differences; the other, the PAIR, following from and embodying what I have called the selection principle and involving the need to discover or invent likeness in order to facilitate, through identifications, the formation of pairs and of groups. This is true of the relationship one takes with one's self and those relationships others seem to make with one's self. That this duality is paradigmatic means at one and the same time that choice is necessary and impossible. Accordingly, the dialectics of paradox become the lingua dicta for the study of envy.
Although I have taken note of the dread that the self will not be chosen as a fit member of the PAIR and GROUP (see also Boris, 1988), I have mostly considered the options each offers and, accordingly,