ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the perverse dynamic and its relation to the different structural forms of hierarchy and association. Envy is often regarded as the most destructive of emotions and one in which perverse pleasure/jouissance is intense. Envy holds an ambivalent stance towards the object, having simultaneously both the desire to possess it and the desire to destroy it in order to spite the other. The development from envy, through remorse, to mourning and identification, traces and offers a pathway of recovery from the destructive effects of envy. Institutionalised envy surrounding their authorised power is then both socially created and managed through the knowledge that the social position is temporary. The psychodynamic roots of democracy indicate a less idealistic picture, especially as they are linked to envy. Sigmund Freud’s classic myth of the primal horde sees the primitive patriarch as jealously guarding his role of master and his possession of the females in the tribe.
