Envy Theory: Perspectives on the Psychology of Envy

398 Pages·2010·1.31 MB·English

by  Frank John Ninivaggi

Envy Theory
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Envy Theory
Perspectives on the Psychology of Envy
Frank John Ninivaggi, M.D.
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham (cid:129) Boulder (cid:129) New York (cid:129) Toronto (cid:129) Plymouth, UK
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Published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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Copyright © 2010 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ninivaggi, Frank John.
Envy theory : perspectives on the psychology of envy / Frank John Ninivaggi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4422-0574-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-0576-5 (electronic)
1. Envy. I. Title.
BF575.E65N56 2010
152.4'8—dc22 2010010841
(cid:2) ™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Introduction 1
Part I ENVY THEORY
Chapter 1 Love and the Complex Problem of Destructiveness 17
Chapter 2 Inborn Envy 43
Chapter 3 An Introduction to the Nuclear Envy Concept 73
Chapter 4 Human Psychological Development:
Theoretical Underpinnings 119
Chapter 5 The Subjective, Intrapsychic, and
Phenomenological Experience of Envy:
Envy and Related States of Mind 181
Chapter 6 The Nuclear Genesis of Envy 215
Chapter 7 A Microscopic Analysis of Envy’s
Dedicated Pathways 241
Chapter 8 Envy’s Conscious Derivatives: Signs, Symptoms,
and Surface Indicators of Envy’s Inner Dialogue 267
v
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vi E Contents
Part II THE HEALTHY MATURATION OF ENVY
Chapter 9 The Healthy Maturation of Envy: Admiration,
Emulation, Gratitude, Empathy, and Helpfulness 287
Part III ENVY IN HISTORY AND LITERATURE
Chapter 10 Recognizing Envy: Historical and Clinical Contexts 339
Afterword 353
References 359
Index 373
About the Author 391
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Introduction
This book introduces envy theory. It is a conceptual exploration of hypoth-
eses and conjectures about the mind’s fundamental cognitive and emotional
makeup—its infrastructure and developmental potentials. Introducing the
envy model and attempting to unravel the meaning of envy illustrates this
orientation. Aims are to contribute to the psychological literature, improve
patient care, and stimulate new research.
Envy theory addresses basic propositions about human psychology, con-
sciousness, and the meaning of personhood. Challenging clinical work with
children and adults in psychiatric contexts over three decades has provided
the data for envy theory. It suggests a number of explanatory factors to make it
socially interesting and of practical use, for example, as a research paradigm.
Many aspects of envy theory await testability.
The significance of envy descriptively, developmentally, and as a typical
state of mind, universal but dimensional in degree, in all psychological func-
tioning is presented. Rather than being simple and discrete, envy is a diverse
set of urges, emotions, and cognitions with a tonic presence that waxes and
wanes over time and experience.
Envy theory is a complex and comprehensive analysis of the conscious and
unconscious factors that result in the self-destructive manifestations of envy.
Unmet needs and desires pressing on consciousness and fostering feelings
of envy and the actions that result can seriously undermine psychic health.
Endowments of envy, however, are not as bleak and unsparing as they at
first may appear. An understanding of envy theory would be incomplete if its
1
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2 E Introduction
clinical significance were not recognized or underestimated. That significance
pivots on the fact that, properly identified and managed, a healthy maturation
of envy may occur from which successful advances both personally and socially
may arise.
Envy theory draws from psychology, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and
aspects of the humanities in constructing models of envy in the human
condition. The task of understanding and attempting to explain human
nature and mind is far too broad to use only a single perspective, especially
since there is no bedrock to understanding. Each branch of knowledge stud-
ies a subset of reality that depends on a variety of factors studied in other
branches. Scientific realism suggests that conjectures arrived at in one area
often help in understanding other areas. Envy theory presumes an intrinsic or-
derliness in human psychology, the details of which are mostly undiscovered.
Inductions from one class of facts—for example, psychoanalytic psychol-
ogy—may be shown to coincide with inductions obtained from the study of
properties emergent in other classes—for example, neuroscience. This sug-
gested complementariness and agreement, in fact, represents a consilience
across disciplines, creating a common, realistic, and orderly groundwork for
explaining the yet uncharted depths of how envy exists in the mind. The
author has found such a bold methodology essential to explain envy.
Unconscious envy is the primitive sensation and conflated feeling of privation,
powerlessness, inferiority, and hostile distress coupled with the urge to rob and spoil
in the face of advantages and their enjoyment existing elsewhere.
Envy is biting the breast that feeds. This is part of envy’s paradoxical
nature. Ironically, envy cannot be taken personally. It is akin to a reflexive
response to another based on the envier’s idiosyncratic phantasy construals. In
this sense, it is insular and “impersonal.”
Phantasied omnipotence (strivings toward exerting power) and a need to
control are the pillars upon which unconscious envy stands. Power in all its
connotations suggests holding great resources along with the authoritative
force, strength, and ability to act. Envy and an underlying sense of powerless-
ness go hand-in-hand. Conscious recognition of envy, for example, resides in
many folklore ideas such as “evil eye” and “jinx.” Both connote identifying
something exceedingly good with the implication that this powerful talisman
will contribute in some way to its spoiling and destruction.
The varied phenomena subsumed in the construct of “power” as played
out in all human relations, from the intrapsychic to the interpersonal to the
extended group, can be seen and described from different perspectives. Con-
ceptually, power denotes sufficient force required to do work and the capacity
to produce change and achieve outcomes. Power can also be defined as the
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Introduction E 3
ability to control, influence, or coerce others and environments by manipu-
lating resources. Throughout envy theory, “power” is given its psychodynamic
appellation—namely, the construct of omnipotence, the unconscious platform
organizing all human power strivings.
In envy theory, unconscious phantasy (Isaacs 1948)—how the mind expe-
riences/pictures itself—represents information and its lived processing. It
is largely though not entirely self-generated. In this book, this spelling of the
term “phantasy” is used to differentiate it from conscious “fantasy” denoting, for
example, imagination and daydreams. The idiosyncratic meaning attributed to
experiences and, for example, the subjective feelings implied by the concept
“qualia” used in formal psychology arise from the personally constructed
matrix of unconscious phantasy.
The consciously experienced features of envy are often reflected in those
who feel themselves or are seen by others to be insecure. People who feel in-
secure and inadequate always look outside themselves and compare what they
have or feel they are with what they perceive others to be or to possess—usually
something ideal. Envy arouses questions about fairness and equal distribution
of resources. Scavenging for hidden treasures and exploiting the acquisition of
what is perceived to be free also imply underlying envy. Envy, in isolation, can
be destructive to psychological processes; envy, recognized and intelligently
managed, transforms and may spur admiration, emulation, aspiration, empathy,
and developmental advantages—the healthy maturation of envy. This is one of
envy theory’s principal themes.
Envy theory’s focus is unconscious envy, the central theme of this book.
Envious attitudes that are conscious may be benign (nonhostile) or contain
willful maliciousness. Unconscious envy, difficult to capture empirically,
however, ordinarily has malignant potential since its signature urges are
primitive, robbing, and corrosively spoiling. On a conscious level, these
correlate with invasion, ruthless exploitation, and scavenging the spoiled
resources. Pain is felt when envy on any level is activated. The envier feels
pain, but the person toward whom envy is directed feels perplexed. Surface
actions mask the envier’s unconscious aims.
Pleiotrophy, one innately endowed predisposition influencing a variety of
different expressions as development proceeds over time, characterizes nuclear
envy. It is a presemantic set of sensations and responsivity, independent of con-
scious thinking, out of which automatic attraction and responses to fear, reward,
and novelty emerge. Cognitive processing, for example, partakes of envy’s cas-
cade of iterative changes in receiving and transforming information.
What are the practical consequences of excessive envy? The details of
envy’s mental mechanisms will unfold throughout this book. The following,
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