Envy and admiration are analysed as alternative ways, in essential respects contrary to each other, to cope with situations of relative deprivation, when one becomes aware of having less of some good than some other has. In terms of phantasies and with respect to the organisation of the objects, envy is a paranoid-schizoid phenomenon, with hopelessness, persecutory phantasies, and object-splitting, whereas admiration is in the depressive position, with hope, sympathy, and compartmentalisation of the admired trait out of its whole-object context. The close relations between envy and admiration and narcissism are pointed out, as are the differences between admiration and idealisation.