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In this article, we attempt to delineate and elaborate a tentative typology of three forms of envy—neediness, separateness, and narcissistic—alongside the implications of classical and relational insights on working through them in analysis. These three forms of envy, although clearly overlapping, are conceptually differentiated, using examples from world literature as well as the clinical setting to elaborate and elucidate the fine minutia of the phenomenon. We develop our view of envy as a complex process, encompassing not only a
This article was published Online First July 25, 2011.
An early version of this article was written by Batya and Michael Shoshani and presented at the White Institute in New York City, New York, September 26, 2006. We express our gratefulness to Bat-Sheva Adler for her assistance in clarifying some of our conceptualizations. A great thanks is due Amir Atsmon for his help in articulating the final version of this article.
constitutional predilection and an intrapsychic event but also a transactive cocreated matrix, and postulate a possible developmental etiology. We present both a brief vignette and a longer one, illustrating a manifestation of neediness envy and the malignant potential of envy in the therapeutic relationship. These examples capture the working through of intrapsychic and intersubjective envy as well as the struggle to detoxify envy and its derivatives. They demonstrate, in the process of working through, how patients are able to regain disowned and dissociated parts of their selves alongside the restoration of the link with the analyst, thus enlivening and expanding the patient's mind as well as the therapeutic dyad's capacity to contain envy.