ABSTRACT
Melanie Klein tells that she considers envy to be an "oral-sadistic and anal-sadistic expression of destructive impulses" and that it has a constitutional basis. In the first instance envy, or primary envy, is of the feeding breast. She defines envy as "the angry feeling that another person possesses and enjoys something desirable- the envious impulse being to take it away or to spoil it". The envious infant desires the breast as food and desires also to be freed from destructive impulses and persecutory anxiety. The ego's first defence and first developmental achievement is to split the breast into good and bad. Excessive envy in the immature ego creates persecutory guilt, which cannot either be tolerated or worked through, and splitting becomes more fixed. When envy is not excessive, jealousy becomes a means of working through, which, in its turn becomes in itself a defence against envy.
