Envy: from Latin invidēre “to look biecally.” According to the Human Birth Theory elaborated by psychiatrist Massimo Fagioli, envy is characterized as an act of intuitive perception, that is, not as a purely physical perception, but as a psychic seeing that leads to an understanding of the meaning of things, which invests the object with interest in its deepest contents. The author starts from three basic propositions by asserting that envy is not an affection, neither an object-relation nor a break in the object-relation, but rather it is a direct attack against the psychic qualities of the object. In his theoretical approach, Fagioli from the outset highlights substantial differences with the concept of envy elaborated by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein and in determining the dynamics of this act. In her work “Envy and Gratitude” (1957) she states that envy comes into action from birth, has a constitutional basis and plays a decisive role in the development of an adult personality.M. Klein while capturing the drive aspect underlying envy does not take into account the perceptual aspect of it, unlike the psychiatrist’s theorization.
Massimo Fagioli was the first to emphasize the “perceptual” aspect of envy, defining it as visual-sadistic expression of destructive impulses, underlying which are the concepts of introjective and projective identification and the split between bad and good breasts.According to Melanie Klein, envy is related to the mechanism of projection, that is, the tendency to put bad things in the breast destroying its creativity, and consequently to the mechanism of projective identification. In Fagioli’s conception, the projection dynamic doesn’t happen since the envious relationship does not involve a blind introjection of the object, but rather “an aggressive pulsional investment of the object” preceded by a libidinal investment of it, that is, the intuition of its psychic qualities.The envious attack is, therefore, related to the concept of aggressiveness and does not refer to the relation with the physical object (which would otherwise be sadomasochism), but to the relation with the psychic object. The envious attack is defined as a fantasized aggressiveness, which occurs in the relation with the object and is based on seeing (sensing) and changing reality into something different.”The envious attack is non-truth. Lies and ignorance, that is, in the end, blindness. Not being able to see the truth and, seeing it, not being able to accept it” 1.
Note
1 M. Fagioli, Death Instinct and knowledge cit., p.193
Bibliography
- M. Fagioli, Death Instict and knowledge (2019), L’Asino d’oro edizioni, Roma 2019
- M. Fagioli, Istinto di morte e conoscenza (1972), L’Asino d’oro edizioni, Roma 2010.
- A. Homberg, Che cos’è l’invidia?, in “Il sogno della farfalla”, 4, 2007, pp. 5-12.
- L. Testa, Lo sguardo di Iago. Alcuni cenni sulla psicopatologia dell’invidia, in “Il sogno della farfalla”, 4, 1997, pp. 3-16.
