Envy and Gratitude

Envy and Gratitude is one of Melanie Klein's final works, published in 1957, when she already had decades of clinical practice and controversy behind her. In just a few pages, she sets out a thesis on the earliest roots of two feelings that shape human relationships.

The central idea is that envy and gratitude are born very early, in the baby's relationship with the person who feeds them. Depending on how much weight each feeling carries, a person will find it easier or harder to enjoy what life offers and to relate to others without hidden resentment.

This is a theoretical text written for colleagues, using technical vocabulary. In this summary, the language has been translated into everyday terms, but the ideas belong to the book and the tradition it represents, not to facts measured in a laboratory.

For Klein, envy is not just wanting what someone else has. It is the impulse to spoil the very thing that is good, because its goodness stirs up the pain that it does not belong to us. Someone who feels envy may even wish for the other person to lose what they have achieved, even if they gain nothing from it.

Think of a coworker who starts belittling another colleague's success with poisonous remarks, or a neighbor who criticizes someone's home renovation with a pleased expression. In both cases, the other person's pleasure bothers them more than their own lack.

The author makes a point of separating this feeling from similar ones. Envy is different from jealousy and from greed, and understanding the differences helps clarify what she means by its deepest roots.

Greed is the desire to empty and consume everything from a source, without caring about what is left. It is the person who piles their plate at an all-you-can-eat buffet until they feel sick, or who drains the energy of a caregiver without realizing they are exhausting the other person.

Jealousy involves at least three people. Someone wants the love they believe belongs to them and fears losing it to a rival, like an older sibling facing a newborn. In jealousy there is a fear of loss, and anger is aimed at the rival.

Envy, by contrast, is a two-part relationship: me and what is good. It attacks the very source of goodness. Because of this, according to the author, it is more destructive, since it can damage the very thing a person needs most.