ABSTRACT
Is jealousy really a green-eyed monster? Under what psychological conditions does jealousy become a personified monster? Under what conditions is it just a very intense instinctual and affective feeling experience that can be talked about, contained in symbolic psychic fantasy, and be understood? Under what conditions is jealousy not only a “green-eyed monster,” but a monster that enacts murder, as in Shakespeare’s (1622) play Othello, and in the Verdi (1887) opera version of that play, Otello? How did Iago know how to push Othello’s buttons, to turn a civilized man into a murderer? What role can we play as psychoanalytic clinicians in transforming potential destructive aggression, in the form of the green-eyed monster of jealousy, into the more benign experience of symbolized hostile fantasy, where self-reflection can be employed to tame the monster? How is jealousy different from envy? How is jealousy more primitive, and 178protosymbolic rather than symbolic, when primal envy is perpetuated by a primal developmental split in the psyche: preoedipal developmental arrest or Michael Balint’s (1968) “basic fault”? These are the questions I enter this chapter with. As I continue, I hope to address some of them.
