Melanie Klein and Instinctual Envy of the Internal Self

Envy is a powerful and difficult clinical topic. Yet Envy pervades our lives, and rivals with Jealousy for its killer instinct and terror filled hunger. After Freud’s more narrow understanding of envy in terms of penis envy, Melanie Klein was the first prominent theorist to expand our view of envy, and lay it at the doorstep of psychoanalysis as the dish “de jour” that haunts our daily life.  From breast envy to womb envy, Klein sufficiently countered the unique status of penis envy as an instinctual main course on the envy menu.