ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the intergenerational impact of envy on the establishment of gender identity in children. Although jealousy evokes primal phantasies- and the primal scene in particular- envy can be represented only in a solitary and somewhat malevolent way. The jealous person feels excluded not only from any contact with the other person, but also from the company of the latter's internal objects. The envious individual, on the other hand, cuts himself off by attacking the capacity for love that the envied person has, because the idea of being in contact with drives and affects belonging to someone else is in itself abhorrent. Melanie Klein's wide-ranging exploration of envy gave it the status of a true psychoanalytic concept. The projective nature of envy, which Klein emphasized, enabled Sigmund Freud, a man, to identify penis envy, and Klein, a woman, to discover envy of the breast.
