ABSTRACT
Melanie Klein's 91-page monograph, Envy and Gratitude, published half a century ago, sold for about 63 pence. The richness of the concept of envy is rooted in the dynamics of envy. The concept of envy is remarkable for providing a bridge between the clinical concerns of psychoanalysis and the science of mind evolving in other disciplines in parallel with progress in psychoanalytic thought. For Klein, the degree of envy experienced by an infant is the key index of the child's constitutional risk for psychological disturbance. She postulated envy as existing from the beginning of life and more or less equated it with sadism. Klein's approach to biology was in terms of libidinal fixation, but it is the sadistic character of the expression of oral and anal concerns that retain the poignancy of her contributions. Envy and gratitude are inborn and call into being the ego mechanisms of splitting and projection, which, in turn, lead to complex and sophisticated psychic processes.
