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It is difficult to imagine a more politically incorrect book on psychoanalysis that Rafael E. López-Corvo's Self-Envy. Which is not to say that the book does not offer some interesting ideas and present considerable scholarship. It does. Yet it took great tolerance on my part to finish this book and attempt to give the author's thesis a fair reading in the light of his perspective on the analytic process. Continuing references to his female patients' penis envy and to their need to thwart the analytic process (as part of their self-destructiveness) were off-putting, to say the least, given that I am both a relational theorist and a feminist.
Nonetheless, I did finish the book and, in doing so, rediscovered the dual realities that 1) anyone dedicated to reading, teaching, and writing about psychoanalysis has something to say, and 2) reading about ideas that conflict with your own helps clarify and strengthen your position. I completed Self-Envy with a mixture of feelings. I was relieved that it was over. I was awed at López-Corvo's relentless attempts to validate his thesis and integrate his beliefs with existing theory. And I remained curious as to whether his anachronist views were common in South America, where he lives and works. Finally, I felt more convinced than ever that a relational or intersubjective approach to analysis is unquestionably progressive in the best sense of the word.
Self-Envy attempts to explain why certain people need to destroy any success they might have in life. The author builds on Freud's observations concerning “Those Wrecked by Success” but disagrees that guilt alone can produce the extent of self-destruction observed in certain persons. His explanation is a complicated one, and he uses much jargon in the telling, so I will attempt to simplify it. First of all, quoting Clifford Scott for coining the term, he does not take credit for the concept of self-envy. Second,