The paper attempts to elucidate the impact of increased individual competition on peer relationships and individual stress among the employees since the demise of national regulation of economy. It is based on statistics and interviews I have made among Finnish employees. Until the 1970s, labour market negotiations and strikes bound internal strifes among personnel into a paranoid-schizoid dualism between antagonistic parties. Deregulation of investment since then and the ensuing downsizing of organisations into mutually competing profit centres and teams have fragmented this ‘oedipal’ authority conflict into sibling rivalry and mutual envy. Because resources seldom match with tasks, insufficiency felt by employees is easily projected into scapegoats. If employees cannot externalize their aggression, they may direct it against themselves. Burnout and depression can be seen both as self-victimization and as an attempt to find a way out from intolerable comparison.