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Envy: I Want All of Who You Are (Part 1 of 2)
Jun 29, 2026
Envy Is A Consistently Underestimated Driver of Severe Personality Psychopathology
This is Part 4 of a 12-Part Series: The Hardest Things in Psychotherapy
Envious Patient
A patient of mine walked into my beautiful office admiring the view of the ocean, the plush furniture, soft colors, some my art. As she sat down she says “ I hope you don’t expect my fee to be paying for this? “ Envy had arrived with a new patient with the likely diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder.
Primitive envy can be hard to see. It is not the same as jealousy, which is about wanting what someone else has.
Primitive envy is — the wish to spoil or destroy and take all that is good in someone, precisely because it is good.
Envy is one of the most consistently underestimated driver of severe personality psychopathology. Envy, as described by Melanie Klein, is about the intolerable quality of the other’s goodness — Envious patients feel their therapist’s genuine capability to care, to have loving relationships, and a meaningful life is an affront, a reminder of their own deficiencies. A therapist becomes something to be attacked rather than appreciated.
To grasp the intensity and primitivity of envy and the unconscious wish to annihilate another, think of a Cannibal who eats his enemy to acquire his power and all that is good, while unconsciously denying his own deficiencies.
Clinically ENVY presents as patients who spoil the work of psychotherapy. They may devalue progress, minimize improvements, can’t acknowledge the the therapist’s help, —destroy anything that feels good precisely because it feels good. In Kleinian terms the good becomes persecutory.
It’s common to take the attack on the therapy and therapist personally. It not easy to avoid becoming defensive or withholding. It is quite difficult to work with envy as the patients unconsciously attacks any feeling of dependency on a therapist.
What to do about it ? Part 2 with some suggestions.
Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst, Educator, and Supervisor Contact: Feinster@RobFeinsteinMD.com
Owner & Founder Empathian LLC ( An Online Mental Health Education Company)
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