Envy  and the Death Desire

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The lack of social bonding does not necessarily produce a strong sense of individuality. The person may be afraid of society. When fear is added to envy then the person creates a barrier of indifference to protect himself – he becomes afraid of any social involvement. The fear leads to the rationalisation of his place or role in life, and so to the acceptance of the necessity of rules, however unpleasant. This adaptation allows him to minimise any anxieties and fears about future change. In this situation, fear is more powerful and dominant than envy ; fear controls and constrains the envy. [²]

Any state of mind is always underpinned by emotional factors. I use the term ‘emotional dynamics’ to mean the principal emotions that drive any particular state of mind.

The emotional dynamics of indifference are :

Indifference = envy + fear

When envy is more dominant than fear, then indifference turns into world-denial (see the next article on Psychology of Nihilism).

Self - Destructiveness

When envy is powerful it can produce remarkable destructive effects in a person's consciousness. Freud saw these effects but did not know the cause. He explained them by postulating the existence of a death ‘instinct ’ in each person. His use of an instinct as an explanation was a result of his biological training.

Since biology does not interest me, I always consider whether I can translate ‘instincts ’ into psychological drives. In my view, some instincts are just internalised emotions. How does Freud's idea of a death instinct translate into the emotional dynamics of any state of mind ?  We need to understand what happens to an emotion when it becomes internalised. [³]

When an emotion is internalised, it is then directed at the person himself rather than outwardly to any other person or object. When an emotion is internalised it ceases to be self-evident or obvious and becomes very difficult to identify. Internalisation of emotion will usually produce some form of internal (mental) conflict. Perhaps the best way to analyse such emotions is by analysing dreams of conflict, especially recurring dreams. [4]

One sense of envy implies that I cannot stand anything that outshines my ideal of myself. Anything that negates my idealised view of myself  leads to destructive feelings within me. When I internalise envy I direct my feelings of  destruction against myself.

The love of self-destruction is the result of the internalisation of envy. Ultimately, the psychological end-product of  this process is the love of one's own death : the envy severs the ego's attachments to life.

Freud was nearly correct in his assumption of the death instinct. The death instinct does exist, but the term ‘instinct ’ is a misnomer since the desire for death is purely of psychological origin.

Desire or Instinct ?

The validity of my view rests on the fact that when feelings of self- destruction are worked through in a deep psycho-analysis then eventually they are resolved and the destructiveness fades away. This would not happen if such destructiveness arose from any form of instinct. Instincts are perpetual.

I replace ‘instinct’ by ‘desire’. When internalised, envy generates the desire for self- destruction. This may vary in intensity. For example, a person may turn to alcohol dependency as a way of wrecking his life, but still want to live. This illustrates a moderate intensity of internalised envy.

Death is just the ultimate form of self-destruction.

When the intensity of  internalised envy becomes extreme, then envy creates the death desire.

But envy need not always be bad. It can propel a person's sense of idealism. Consider mania. I had many manic daydreams of being a teacher who had numerous friends. This was a compensating dream to the loneliness of my self-analysis. What was directing my mania?  It was my enviousness of certain desirable traits of character in people that I most admired. Some of the content of my mania was determined by what I most envied in others. In general, when mania combines with envy then the person wants to emulate the role model that is most admired. In this situation, envy is not internalised.

But when manic dreams do not come true then it becomes so easy to turn 
that envy onto oneself  and create internal destructiveness.

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[¹]. A summary of the factors of some important emotions is :
Guilt = self-pity + self-hate.
Pride = vanity + hatred of other people.
Narcissism = love + vanity.
Jealousy = love + self-pity.
Anxiety = fear + vanity.

My definitions, descriptions, and analysis of emotions are given in the three articles on Emotion. See Basic Ideas page. [1]

[²]. The place of indifference in the resolution of sorrow is described in the 5th article on Abreaction, Forgiveness and Acceptance : sub-section Stages of Sorrow Resolution. [2]

[³]. The article on Depression and Autism contains a sub-section on Internalisation of Emotions.
There is an article on Internalisation on my website  Discover Your Mind. [3]

[4]. Conflict dreams are briefly mentioned in the article Depression and Autism, sub-section Internalisation of Emotions.
Dreams which feature either paranoia or revenge are described in the article Destructiveness, sub-section Dreams of Conflict.
There is an article on Reverie and Dreams on my website  The Subconscious Mind. [4]

Envy is featured in another article on Destructiveness.

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Copyright @2003  Ian Heath
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