Section Headings [ Jealousy and Narcissism] [ Guilt and Pride] [ Love and Hate]

[ Vanity and Self-Pity] [ Envy] [ Anxiety]

The previous articles in the chapter The Nature of Emotion, beginning with Feelings, dealt with general theory about emotion and unconscious ideas. In this chapter, I turn to the characteristics of a few important emotions.

Envy is not always easy to separate from jealousy. Envy is behind the worst forms of destructiveness. Envy prefers to destroy, jealousy (love mode) prefers to control. Both envy and jealousy make the person seek social company ; but whereas jealousy seeks social involvement, envy lets the person rest content with being a social observer. When envy is dominant in me I like to have afternoon tea in a tea shop and watch the world go by (however, sometimes my mood then changes to jealousy in self-pity mode as loneliness arises).

In childhood, envy of the general character traits of a parent appears as a lack of attachment towards that parent (envy is one of the factors that underlie autism). The difference here between hate and envy is that hate can be considered to be a negative attachment, whilst envy destroys and neutralises any attachment so long as the child is in a position of inequality with the parent.

Note.
The negative effects of envy are described in two articles on my website Patterns of Confusion. The articles are : Depression and Autism and other States of Despair, and Envy and the Death Desire. See Links page for the web address.

Copyright @2002  Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved

The copyright is mine and the articles are free to use. They can be reproduced anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.