Response to Commentaries on “Libidinal and Destructive Envy”: More About the Evolutionary and Intersubjective Value of Lack-Envy

Abstract

In this paper, I respond to Amy Schwartz Cooney’s and Rachel Sopher’s discussions of my paper “Libidinal and Destructive Envy.” I argue that my reappraisal of the deadly sin of envy as being on the side of life and serving the self’s survival needs rather than originating in a putative death instinct by no means “takes the bite out of envy,” as Schwartz Cooney asserts. I also argue that Sopher’s view covers over the self-state of lack, which determines, at least in part, the course of envy. Moreover, whereas Sopher describes the main countertransference difficulty when working with a patient’s envy in terms of having to manage aggression while forcing the realization of our own inner demons, I suggest that the analyst has the even more difficult task of being the bearer of bad news: acceptance of the real world’s unequal distribution of desiderata. The paper also argues for replacing the one-person descriptor of “envy” with the two-person descriptor of “lack-envy.”