Sibling Rivalry and the Problem of Envy

In A Searching and vividly written book entitled Mal Occhio, Lawrence DiStasi recalls the tactics used by his Italian grandparents to guard against the malevolent impact of the ‘evil eye’, especially their avoidance of boasting to strangers about their children for fear of stimulating envy (Distasi 2). Beautiful, healthy children were so highly prized that they became the chief targets for envy, and should a child become suddenly and unaccountably ill, the workings of an evil eye were instantly suspected, and a counter-sorcerer would be enlisted to speak some healing incantations and to counteract the sickening effects of the envious attack.

When considering the psychology of envy, it is important to note that in DiStasi's account children were the most frequent targets of envy. A child drew the attention of an evil eye not so much because of economic or genealogical advantages but because it—the child—symbolises the self, the highest value, the ‘treasure hard to attain’. In this constellation, we see a picture of the ego's envy of the self.

It may seem internally contradictory to speak of the ego's envy of the self, since both would seem to belong to oneself, yet it does seem to be the case that this is what envy essentially is. ‘Envy’, from the Latin invidere, means ‘to look into’ with intense hostility. The envious eye is attracted by objects that capture a projection of the self, because an inner sense of self is what the envious person essentially lacks.

In envy, what is perceived in the other is the self. What the envious eye sees is a ‘self-object’ (to use Kohut's neologism), and one that by its deepest disposition deprives the subject of direct access to the self. Its disposition appears to the subject to be withholding. The inner void that is produced (the ‘no-breast’ state referred to by Fordham, (Fordham 3, p. 199) generates hatred and destructiveness, which are so central to envy's energy. It is the ego's envy of the alienated self, perceived externally in