ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes the manner in which the group copes with instances of envy and to redefine the origins of envy based on the dimensions manifested in the group. He shows that envy is less directly linked to an “alteration of the ego” due to “a constitutional strength of instinct”, as S. Freud and later M. Klein assumed, and more to an “alteration of the ego”. Envy is known to constitute a mental and psychological process, the causes and function of which Freud believed to originate in the triadic infant–mother–father relationship as penis envy. The hypothesis of the “dead” object, as noted by W. R. Bion, could open new paths in the approach to envy with regard to an alteration of the ego, or what might be called character disturbances. The issue of envy in group analysis has rarely, if ever, been an object of systematic study.
