after eden - envy and the defenses against anxiety paradigm -- mark stein (2009)

After Eden: Envy and the defences againstanxiety paradigm

Mark Stein

A B S T R AC T Envy has the potential for substantial destructiveness in social

systems. Despite its fundamental place in the Kleinian psychoanalytic

study of individuals, for several decades, envy has been virtually

excluded from psychoanalytic studies of social systems. This paper

focuses on this omission, arguing that the Kleinian school

established a paradigm focusing on ‘social systems as a defence

against anxiety’. The implicit delimiting of this paradigm has allowed

no room for envy: envy is quite distinct from anxiety; and it is not

defensive, involving unwarranted attacks instead. In recent years,

envy has emerged as the existing paradigm’s anomaly. It is argued

here that a new paradigm which has conceptual space for the

notion of ‘social systems as an envious attack’ is required. Group,

organizational and societal examples are offered to exemplify the

dangerous and malignant potential of envy in such social systems.

K E Y WO R D S anxiety j defences j envy j paradigm j social system

Introduction and outline

And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell . . .and it came to pass, when they were in the field, thatCain rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him.

(Genesis, Ch. iv)

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Human Relations

[0018-7267(2000)53:2]

Volume 53(2): 193–211: 010558

Copyright © 2000

The Tavistock Institute ®

SAGE Publications

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After the fall of man and the exile from the Garden of Eden, the Bible tellsus that Eve bore Adam two sons: Cain, a tiller of the ground, and Abel, ashepherd. In the process of time, Cain and Abel were to offer to God sacri-fices from their produce. Cain’s offering of fruit or grain did not please God,while Abel’s offering of a lamb did. These offerings were always cooked ona fire or ‘burnt’, and God appears to have preferred the roasting of a succu-lent lamb to the burning of fruit or grain. God told Cain that he did notrespect his offering. ‘And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell’(Genesis, Ch. iv). In his anger and his envy, Cain slew Abel.

This fable tells of the first conflict following the fall of man and thedeparture from Eden, and one that pivots on the issue of envy. Although itdoes not involve a group according to the conventional psychological defi-nition (Mullins, 1996), at the level of myth it is about five characters that doconstitute a group: God, who judges Cain’s and Abel’s sacrifices, observesCain’s fratricide, and punishes him; Cain, whose envy inspires him to murder;Abel, who is murdered; and Adam and Eve, parents of Cain and Abel, whoseearlier sin led to their exile from Eden and inaugurated moral learning as acentral theme of the Bible. It is in the context of this group that the tragicsequence of events took place, events which centred on God’s judgement thatAbel’s produce made a better sacrifice than Cain’s. Cain’s crime was par-ticularly heinous because Abel’s only misdeed was to be seen to have pro-duced something more worthy than his brother; it was an envy-inspiredfratricide. It was tragic not just for Abel but for Cain himself: through hisfratricide he lost his sole companion and sibling, his only potential tradingpartner, and the only other descendant of Adam and Eve.

That envy lies at the core of the Bible’s first account of family or grouplife following the fall and the exile from Eden is of considerable moment. Inthis paper, it is suggested that the primitive envy illustrated by the story ofCain and Abel is of fundamental significance in groups, organizations andsociety in general, especially where work and the products of work are con-cerned. It suggests that envy may be understood as a property of the group,organization or society, and not just the individuals within them.

Because of their substantial exploration and theorizing of the envyconcept, the argument here is located within the debates framed by the Klein-ian school, particularly those framed by the ideas of Wilfred Bion and byMelanie Klein herself. The sequence of the development of their ideas isimportant. If we look first at the psychoanalytic study of the individual in thewritings of Klein, we find considerable focus on anxieties (Klein,1935/1975a, 1940/1975b) and – what could broadly be termed – thedefences employed against them, especially splitting and projective identifi-cation (Klein, 1946/1975c). Since approximately the late 1950s, this school

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of thought took a new turn with the elaboration of the envy concept byMelanie Klein, articulated in her seminal contribution (Klein, 1957/1975d).Interest in the topic of envy in individuals has not only become widespread,but is also now central to the Klein–Bion tradition (Rosenfeld, 1952, 1987;Bion, 1962, 1965, 1967; Joseph, 1986).

Since the Second World War, a substantial body of literature in theKlein–Bion tradition has focused on the psychoanalytic study of socialsystems, which includes groups, organizations and society in general. Thisfocus has drawn directly on Klein’s ideas concerning anxiety and the variousways we have of protecting ourselves against it: the central organizing themeof this genre has been that these social systems function defensively in orderto ward off anxieties which their members are unable to bear. This idea –developed in two key papers by Jaques (1955) and Menzies (1960) – thusshaped a paradigm of enquiry into this area.

What is striking is that a fundamental lacuna may be observed in thisliterature on groups, organizations and society: while envy has become aquintessential concept in the literature on individuals, up until recently, it hasbeen virtually absent from the literature on social systems. It is only latterlythat envy has emerged as an anomaly of some significance in relation to theparadigm. This paper focuses on this omission. It argues that – especiallywhen it is unconscious – envy in groups, organizations and society deservesconsiderably greater attention than it has received hitherto. It proposes thatenvy constitutes a phenomenon quite different in kind from those exploredunder the ‘defences against anxiety’ paradigm, and examines why it wasexcluded from the paradigm. It then provides group, organizational andsocietal examples which illustrate the notion of a culture shaped by envy. Itconcludes with an overview of the argument and a consideration of the sig-nificance of the envy concept for our understanding of social systems.

The establishment of the defences against anxiety paradigm

This section examines the establishment of the core concept of the psycho-analytic study of social systems, that of defences against anxiety. As thedefences against anxiety notion is conceptually grounded in the psycho-analytic study of individuals, it would be helpful to begin with Klein’s viewof the nature of anxiety in the individual. Klein distinguished between twotypes of anxiety: persecutory anxiety (Klein, 1935/1975a) is a primitiveexperience involving paranoid fears of being attacked and annihilated, whiledepressive anxiety fundamentally concerns the fear of the loss or death of aloved object (Klein, 1935/1975a, 1940/1975b). These two types of anxiety

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are seen to play a central role throughout the life of an individual, and to besubject to a range of defence mechanisms which keep them largely located inthe unconscious.

Psychoanalytic studies of groups and organizations in the Klein–Biontradition have invariably emerged from these ideas. Together with Bion’s ideaof the basic assumption (explored later in this paper), the most cogent formu-lation of these concepts is by Jaques (1955) and Menzies (1960). The viewpostulated by Jaques and Menzies suggests that anxieties and defencesagainst them are as present in groups, organizations and society as they arein individuals. While primitive feelings and anxieties may occur only withinthe minds of individuals, it is suggested that individuals within social systemsmay collude by collectively and unconsciously designing defensive systemsand structures which protect them from such feelings, ensuring that theyremain unconscious. Menzies’ 1960 study of student nurses is a classic in thefield. Here she argues that nurses were protected from anxiety by beingdenied close contact with ill or dying patients. This was supported, forexample, by the hospital system of task allocation which resulted in a widevariety of staff being responsible for any one patient; by excessive movementof nurses between different wards and different hospitals; and by a culturein which patients were identified not by name but by bed number or bydisease. Menzies concludes that – to the detriment of nurse and patient alike– the nurse’s training promoted a systematic avoidance rather than a workingthrough of the anxieties implicit in the nurse’s career.

The concept of a social system as a defence against anxiety had apowerful impact on a small but significant community of scholars. To useKuhn’s (1970) terms, it established itself as a paradigm and initiated a periodof normal science which was extremely fruitful. The Tavistock Institute’smajor piece of work undertaken under the leadership of Jaques (1951) withthe Glacier Metal engineering company is one notable example. So is Millerand Gwynne’s (1974) study of residential institutions for the chronically illand physically handicapped. Later examples are Miller (1985), Hirschhorn(1985), and Krantz and Gilmore (1990). Aside from their individual interest,these studies were also able to furnish empirical evidence which would helpto substantiate the prevailing concepts of the paradigm.

The appropriation of basic assumptions into the defencesparadigm

If the defences against anxiety paradigm became predominant, what of Bion’sequally important theory of basic assumptions? Let us examine this concept


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briefly. Bion argued that a group may share an unconscious basic assump-tion which undermines its capacity for rational task activity. He identifiedthree types of basic assumptions. First, there is the basic assumption of depen-dence, in which the group unconsciously assumes that one of its members isuniquely able to look after and satisfy its needs. Second, there is the basicassumption of pairing, which occurs when the group shares the unconsciousbelief that two members will join together to produce a leader. The third basicassumption is that of fight–flight in which the group shares the unconsciousbelief that it either has to fight an external enemy or run away from it.

There are two key questions here. First, how has the community ofscholars understood the relation between the basic assumptions and theconcept of defences against anxiety? Second, does this accurately representBion’s view of the basic assumptions? There can be little doubt that Bion’sformulation did locate anxiety and its defences as a central factor in the cre-ation of the basic assumption group. He cites, for example, an instance of atherapy group which holds a basic assumption concerning the role of friend-liness and how it may offer the group protection from the powerful sense ofanxiety which dominates it (Bion, 1961). Bion also discusses at some lengththe relationship between anxiety and the basic assumption of dependency.Since the formulation of these ideas, writers in this field (Rioch, 1975; Eisold,1985; Turquet, 1985) have generally understood basic assumptions in termsof the defences against anxiety argument.

However, a further look at Bion’s exposition suggests that this is onlya partial reading of the meaning of the ‘basic assumption’. In Experiences ingroups and other papers (1961) he wrote:

I introduce some concepts new to psycho-analysis . . . because I wantedto see if a start disencumbered by previous theories might lead to apoint at which my views of the group and psycho-analytic views of theindividual could be compared, and thereby judged to be either com-plementary or divergent.

(Bion, 1961: 142)

This desire to keep open the precise nature of his concepts applies most obvi-ously to the ‘basic assumption’. Undoubtedly, part of what is contained inthe concept has to do with the emotion of anxiety and with defences againstit, but Bion did not want to restrict the notion to these ideas alone. Indeed,the term ‘defence’ is not cited in the index of his Experiences in groups andother papers (1961). In discussing these ideas, he spoke, for example, of the‘manipulation’ (p. 148) implicit in the activities of the basic assumptiongroup, of it being ‘hostile’ to development (p. 159) and of the ‘hatred’ of


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learning by experience (p. 86). These terms are not exclusively concernedwith anxiety or with defences against them.

However, those aspects of basic assumption activity that go beyondanxiety and defensiveness began to emerge more clearly only with Bion’s laterbrief exploration of the concept of the ‘parasitic group’ (Bion, 1984a).Clearly, the parasitic group has all the characteristics of a basic assumptiongroup: its members share assumptions which are both unconscious and dam-aging, and are consequently unable to engage in constructive task activity.Yet, one of its central features is a malevolent sense of envy that infuses thegroup and its relation to the ‘mystic’, the person who is either felt to be arespected genius or a despised tyrant. Insofar as it is infused with evil andhatred, the basic assumption concerns emotions other than anxiety andmodes of operation that go beyond the merely defensive. ‘In the parasiticrelationship’, wrote Bion, ‘the product of the association is something thatdestroys both parties to the association . . . [e]nvy begets envy, and this self-perpetuating emotion finally destroys host and parasite alike’ (Bion, 1984a:78). The sense in which this phenomenon goes beyond the defensive is clearerif we look at other definitions of parasitism. Although he studied individualsrather than groups, Rosenfeld’s conceptual development of the notion of par-asitism occurred around the same time as Bion’s, within the same intellectualframework and focuses on the same issues. ‘Severe parasitism’, wrote Rosen-feld, ‘. . . is . . . not just a defensive state . . . but . . . an expression of aggres-sion, particularly envy’ (1987: 163, my italics).

Yet, the way in which basic assumptions have generally been under-stood has foreclosed these possibilities: the defences paradigm led to a periodof normal science which focused on establishing its own concepts, and hadlittle interest in others. ‘Normal science’, argues Kuhn, ‘does not aim atnovelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none’ (Kuhn, 1970:52). It was only later when the anomaly of envy grew more evident that itbecame possible to re-examine and scrutinize this paradigm.

The concept of envy in individuals

So what then is envy? An exposition of Klein’s concept of envy is best under-taken by looking first at our everyday notion of it and then establishing howshe developed and extended it. For the sake of simplicity, the notion of envyis discussed here by focusing on the envy that the self feels towards another:clearly, all these issues apply equally to the feelings of envy that another mayexperience towards the self. The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary suggests twokey aspects to the envy concept. First, envy involves the relation to another


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who one perceives to be more fortunate than oneself. Second, envy involvesfeelings of ill-will or ‘mortification’ towards this person. Here immediatelylies one of the most striking characteristics of envy, one that sets it apart fromthe emotion of anxiety: whatever anxieties one may feel, envious feelings ofill-will and the desire to see harm done to the other are conceptually quitedistinct from the anxieties one may feel about oneself or about the other. Thisof course does not preclude the possibility or even likelihood that envy andanxiety may occur together in the same person. However, the key issue is thatthe active desire to damage or witness damage being done to another –Schadenfreude – is an essential defining characteristic of envy.

The Kleinian concept of envy builds on these ideas by adding thefollowing aspects. Third, these feelings of ill-will are often unconscious. Thissuggests that we are frequently unaware of the extent to which we feel hatefuland envious of another whom we believe has something special. Neither arewe aware of the extent to which we may be involved in destructive activitieswhich are shaped by such unconscious feelings.

Fourth, such unconscious envy is experienced most powerfully in rela-tion to those on whom one is dependent. Klein’s observations of infants ledher to the view that a powerful envious desire to retaliate may be evoked bythe experience of dependence. Returning to Cain and Abel, one of the mostpoignant aspects of the story is that – in his fratricide – Cain killed the personhe would have been most likely to depend on: Abel would have been his onlypotential trading partner, and his only sibling and companion. Ironically,therefore, the envious attack invariably results in damage to both theattacked other and to the self.

Fifth, and related to the above point concerning dependence, envyinvolves a violent attack and is not concerned with self-preservation. It is thusdifferent from the notion of rivalry which implies a form of competition inwhich one attempts to strengthen and enhance one’s own position vis-a-visthe other. It is also in this sense diametrically opposed to defences againstanxiety: while a defence against anxiety is felt (consciously or unconsciously)to protect the person, the envious attack is inspired by a malevolence whichhas nothing to do with self-protection. Another way to put this is that, whiledefensiveness involves a relationship with something or someone experiencedas bad or threatening to the self, envy involves an unwarranted attack onsomething or someone experienced to be good in some way. So, althoughdefensiveness and envy may empirically occur together, the key point here isthat conceptually they are entirely distinct.

Klein’s publication in 1957 of her ideas on envy in individuals had animmediate impact on scholarship in the field, despite some controversy overthe term (Joffe, 1969). Two important factors contributed to this. One was


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that Klein argued that envy helped to elucidate certain phenomena psycho-analysts had been struggling with ever since Freud developed his firstconcepts and techniques. In particular, Freud’s pivotal concept of the deathinstinct (1926/1953–73), as well as Klein’s own notion of aggressivity (seeKlein, 1975e) would – she argued – be regarded somewhat differently in thelight of the concept of envy. Second, some of the most prominent Kleinianscholars – such as Rosenfeld (1952) and Segal (1950) – were working alongsimilar lines at the time of the formulation of her idea, with others develop-ing it shortly after. By the time of Klein’s death in 1960, it was already clearthat the envy concept had become a central idea in her life’s work. Overall,it could be said that, from the late 1950s on, the use and development of theconcept of envy was concurrent with the development of Kleinian scholar-ship concerning individuals (Hinshelwood, 1989). Indeed, Bion’s ideas con-cerning the individual – regarded by many as the most importantpsychoanalytic views in the latter part of the 20th century – are unthinkablewithout the envy concept (Bion, 1959/1967, 1962, 1965).

The lacuna

Despite its fundamental position in the Kleinian literature on individuals,envy is marked by being almost entirely absent from the first few decades ofKleinian inspired studies of groups, organizations and society. Specifically,there is remarkably little on the subject between the 1950s and the early1980s. It is striking, for example, that the concept makes no appearance atall in Colman and Bexton’s (1975) Group relations reader 1, which containsthe most comprehensive collection published in the field prior to the 1980s.It is also entirely absent from the only book presenting an overview of thefield at this time, de Board’s (1978) The psychoanalysis of organizations.These two works were designed to represent the ‘state of the art’ at their time,and there is no reason to suppose they failed to do this.

Yet, it is not only the establishment of this perspective that is note-worthy, but its durability. Consider especially volumes published by some ofthe most influential authors in the field as late as the 1980s and 1990s. Theterm makes no appearance, for example, in Menzies Lyth’s impressive two-volume collection of papers (1988, 1989). This is despite her intensiveinvolvement in the world of Kleinian psychoanalysis at the time, and herinsightful understanding of defences. It also receives no mention in severalvaluable and important books published around the same time, such asHirschhorn (1988), Shapiro and Carr (1991), and Miller (1993). Perhapseven more striking is its omission from two key collections of edited works


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at the time: Trist and Murray’s The social engagement of social science, Vol.1 (1990), covering the first four decades of socio-psychological work of theTavistock Institute, and Hirschhorn and Barnett’s The psychodynamics oforganizations (1993).

Explanations for the late arrival of envy

How, then, does one explain the curious phenomenon of the late arrival ofthe envy concept in the literature on social systems? One factor is that thekey innovators in the field formulated their most influential and original ideasprior to the publication of Klein’s principal work on envy, ‘Envy and grati-tude’ (1957/1975d), and largely in the absence of the envy concept. Mostnotable among these were, first, Jaques’ classic paper (Jaques, 1955). Thenthere was Menzies work during the 1940s and 1950s using similar conceptsto Jaques, and published in 1960 (Menzies, 1960). Finally, there was Bion’sconcept of the basic assumption group. While this notion – as is argued above– is somewhat broader than the defences against anxiety idea, it too predatesKlein’s envy concept: the book Experiences in groups and other papers (Bion,1961) comprises seven papers which were first published in Human Relationsbetween 1948 and 1951, and a paper ‘Group dynamics: A re-view’, whichwas first published in the International Journal of Psycho-analysis in 1952.Conceptualized well before 1957 and with no explicit reference to envy, theseworks shaped the field of the psychoanalytic study of social systems for manydecades to follow.

In searching for an explanation, we need to go further than this: weneed to turn to the history and philosophy of science. Thomas Kuhn (1970)has argued that revolutionary scientific ideas are simultaneously productiveand restrictive of development. On the one hand, they define a discourse byproviding concepts which may then be examined in empirical settings by ageneration of scholars. Once the paradigm has been formulated, a period ofnormal science sets in during which the paradigm’s core concepts are furthersubstantiated and explored by these scholars. The concepts are fruitful to theextent that time after time researchers are able to provide new empiricalmeaning to them in a variety of scientific contexts. However, the very utilityand force of these concepts lead to the exclusion of other concepts and otherempirical data. Initially, these other data are seen to be isolated anomalies.Those few works which considered envy thus had little impact on the para-digm itself: envy was the paradigm’s anomaly. This is not to suggest any sortof conspiracy, but rather a collective inability to recognize phenomena fromoutside the paradigm. It is only now that envy as a phenomenon has begun


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to emerge more frequently that we are led to review and reformulate thescientific paradigm.

The need for a new paradigm

In articulating the new paradigm, several points should be noted. First, it isclear that some of the essential empirical groundwork for the paradigm hasalready been established: envy is clearly an important phenomenon in groups,organizations and society (Kernberg, 1985; Main, 1985; Kets de Vries &Miller, 1989; Kreeger, 1992; Halton, 1994; Obholzer, 1994; Schlapobersky,1994; Stein, 1995, 1996, 1997). What has not occurred, however, is therequisite change at the conceptual level.

Second, the idea of envy needs to supplement rather than replace theidea of defences against anxiety of the existing paradigm. For cliniciansworking with envy, this hardly needs stating, as it is clear that anxiety andenvy are interrelated in complex ways. One obvious factor here is that asocial system may be characterized by both envy and defences againstanxiety, simultaneously, at different times, at different levels, or in differentparts of the system. The presence of one emotion does not preclude the possi-bility of the other. Another is the need to include the important but complexphenomena of defences against envy, which thus brings these two quite dis-tinct concepts together (Klein, 1957/1975d; Main, 1985; Kreeger, 1992;Obholzer, 1994).

Third, as the existing paradigm is defined – and therefore constrained– by two components, ‘defences’ and ‘anxiety’, the new paradigm needs togo beyond both of these. It is essential that the new paradigm focuses onmodes of activity that are attacking, and not only those that are defensive; itis also essential that it allows for a range of emotions other than anxiety, mostnotably that of envy. Envy, however, is not the only emotion that may fit intothis category; other relevant emotions, not explored here, are those of hatredand greed, both of which may be intrinsically of an attacking rather thandefensive nature.

Social systems as an envious attack

The new paradigm, it is proposed, should encompass the idea that the socialsystem itself – and not just the individuals within it – may be characterizedby a quality of enviously attacking that which is perceived to be good ordesirable. This characteristic may be present only briefly; alternatively, it may


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last for a substantial period of time, leading to a chaotic and endemicallymalfunctioning social system. In either case, envy is rooted in the function-ing of the social system in such a way that goes beyond the role of any par-ticular individual. Indeed, there is an ongoing process of recruitment of newmembers into certain parts of the system, and these new members are con-sciously or unconsciously tasked with the role of engaging in new enviousattacks on others.

In such a system, the envious attack may be directed at several types oftargets. First, positive and healthy links with others are detested and subjectto envious attack: as a consequence all interpersonal contact is felt to bepoisonous and malign. As Bion emphasizes (1959/1967), it is not just the otherwho is detested, but the very concept of a link, association or bond betweentwo parties who are interdependent. While it is difficult to paraphrase Bion’scomplex use of terms, we can borrow his notion of ‘attacks on linking’ (Bion,1959/1967) in referring to the idea of attacks on all meaningful relationships.Second, learning is felt to evoke excessively uncomfortable feelings of depen-dence on others who have knowledge or who may be able to facilitate thelearning process. Everything associated with learning, including its products,those who deliver it, and the very concept of learning itself, is thereforedetested and enviously attacked and undermined. Third, it is not possible totolerate leadership because this too evokes feelings of excessive dependenceand envy of those who may be seen to be in a superior position and whosework is essential for the social system’s survival: leadership is thus enviouslyattacked and undermined. What connects these three aspects – linking, learn-ing and leadership – is that they all concern an attack on others who are per-ceived to have something desirable and on whom parts of the social systemare dependent. All therefore provide raw material for envy.

In illustrating these phenomena, a sequence of examples will examineenvy of the following types: as a property of the group; as a property of aninstitution or major parts of it; and as a property of society. A good exampleof envy as a property of a group is found in Schlapobersky (1994). This wasa group of seven members who had been meeting twice weekly over manyyears for the purpose of group analysis. Having shared a great deal togetherover the years, these members were by now very close, working hard tounderstand each other’s difficulties and affirm each other’s success. In onesession, a member, who had been struggling with his parents’ envious attackson his youth and individuation, reveals that he had just reached a crucialfinancial target in his business. This considerable achievement does not earnthe regard it merits from group members, whose responses remain ratherlimp. The conversation moves to a woman in the group who is expecting ababy. This pregnancy has already had a remarkable effect on the group and


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on the two other women members in particular. The woman had struggledto conceive and was then fortunate enough to find herself with a healthy preg-nancy. Since then, the first of the two other women left the group unexpect-edly. Now the second of the two other woman, the mother of a small child,offers a substantial amount of advice, full of references to ectopic pregnan-cies and a range of other disasters. As Schlapobersky argues, envy infuses thegroup, and this is only relieved following an interpretation to this effect bythe group analyst.

At a second level, envy may infuse an institution or a major part of it.One example of this is provided by Halton (1994), who describes how agroup of lecturers at a public sector educational institution struggled toorganize a money-raising short course out of term-time. Their first major set-back occurred when the catering department refused to provide tea andcoffee to course participants. This was followed by the maintenance depart-ment closing down the toilet facilities for maintenance work during thecourse, despite requests from the course organizers for this to be delayed. Theparticipants left the course full of blame and criticism for the course organ-izers and the institution as a whole. What may help to explain the difficultiesbetween these departments is that – following earlier competitive tenderingby private sector organizations – both the catering and the maintenancedepartments were about to be closed down. While one may have some sym-pathy with their difficult position, these events suggest that the envy whichwas manifest in these departments led them to subvert the work of the aca-demic department whose position was more secure than theirs.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution as an attacking, envioussocial system

If the above illustrate the existence of an attacking, envious culture in groupsand organizations, such phenomena may also be manifest at a much broadersocietal level. The example explored here is that of the Chinese CulturalRevolution (1965–69), during which time – it will be argued – the political,economic and social life of an entire country most powerfully manifested theenvious attacking qualities mentioned above. The magnitude of the disasterof the Cultural Revolution is already well established (Sung An, 1972; Mac-Farquhar, 1983; Fairbank, 1986; Thurston, 1988). Over the course of threeand half years, the Chinese Cultural Revolution left little unscathed: adminis-tration at virtually every level and in every sector collapsed; the educationsystem was all but destroyed; and much of personal and family life wasruined by denunciations, ritual humiliations, torture and murder. As well as


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an estimated 400,000 who died of maltreatment, a staggering half a billionChinese people experienced ruinous intrusions into their lives. The devasta-tion was long-lasting: the decade following the initial onslaught has beencalled China’s ‘ten lost years’ (Fairbank, 1986).

The three types of attacks – on learning, linking and leadership –characteristic of an envious social system were all powerfully present in theCultural Revolution. First, it involved an indiscriminate and violent attackon learning. Mao closed down the country’s entire middle-school and uni-versity system, instructing the students to form themselves into bands of RedGuards. This move was a critical one in making the Cultural Revolution poss-ible because it provided an army of millions of Red Guard ‘revolutionary suc-cessors’, most of whom were teenagers, who were to lead the struggle in thedestruction of the ideas, customs, culture and habits of the existing society(Sung An, 1972). The Red Guard began with the denouncement, torture and– on occasion – murder of the staff of the schools and universities. Schoolteachers and university professors were sent en masse to join the peasantryin the countryside; books were burnt; and libraries destroyed. For a decade,virtually the only ‘learning’ of an entire country was the ritualized learningoff by heart and repetition of the sayings of Mao. Such was the assault onlearning, thinking and creativity that anyone who was either involved in edu-cation or showed signs of having thoughts of their own was seen to requirepublic humiliation, exile, torture or death (Thurston, 1988).

Second, the Cultural Revolution involved a deeply damaging attack onlinking, on all personal and family relationships. There were several aspectsto this. One was simply the number of people who were murdered, incar-cerated, or sent to the countryside. Another, more specifically, was that theselosses and separations caused a substantial number of children to be leftwithout parental care. These children frequently formed gangs who roamedthe streets scavenging and stealing food, or who found they were able to venttheir anger by joining the Red Guards. A major part of a generation of chil-dren thus suffered dislocation, lack of parenting and schooling, and foundtheir only refuge in the institutionalized violence of the Red Guard. Anotheraspect of the attacks on linking was the Red Guards’ deliberate destructionof all meaningful forms of social activity. This is poignantly illustrated inChang’s celebrated autobiography Wild swans (1993), in which she and herteenage Red Guard colleagues shut down the teahouses of the entire provinceof Sichuan, where she lived. The teahouses, which had been virtually the onlyplaces for social life for the ordinary citizens of Sichuan, remained closed for15 years. A further aspect was that, as the Red Guard rampaged throughsociety, so individuals increasingly began to fear for their own safety. Guiltby association, one of the guiding principles of the Red Guard, led people to


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believe they could save themselves by denouncing those closest to them; insome cases, with the threat of torture or their own death hanging over them,they felt forced to make such denunciations. Employees therefore denouncedbosses and other employees; children denounced parents; friends denouncedfriends; couples separated and divorce was rife. Terror swept through society.To borrow Thurston’s term, this ‘infectious revolt’ (Thurston, 1988) consti-tuted an attack on any and all of the meaningful connections people had witheach other. It is an extreme exemplification of the envious attack on linking.

Third, a substantial envious attack on all forms of leadership occurred.The Cultural Revolution began with the dismissing of the ‘revisionists’ in thePolitburo and the Communist Party, many of whom had been trying to recon-struct society after Mao’s disastrous ‘great leap forward’ of the late 1950s,which had led to death by malnutrition of between 20 and 30 million people(Fairbank, 1986). The Red Guard, mainly teenagers, were encouraged toattack and take over the running of all institutions at national and local level.With no prior experience of administration or leadership, they appointedthemselves to run all manner of organizations: public utilities, hospitals, localgovernment and industry. Subsequently, most of the Red Guard were them-selves denounced by others, and there was continual fighting around theendemically anarchic and dysfunctional organizations taken over by them.Chaos ensued over many years: no one was safe. In short, with the sole excep-tion of Mao, anyone capable of effective leadership was precluded from exer-cising their authority in any way.

Conclusion

Let us return to review the main themes of this paper. The paper focuses onthe remarkable exclusion for several decades of the envy concept frompsychoanalytic studies of social systems. Noting the centrality of the envyconcept in Kleinian psychoanalytic writings on individuals, it draws thereader’s attention to its surprising exclusion for several decades from the writ-ings on social systems. It goes on to note that the conceptual innovations ofBion, Menzies and Jaques during the 1950s provided the basis for a para-digm which centred on the notion of ‘social systems as a defence againstanxiety’. This paradigm was both productive and restrictive of conceptualdevelopment in the field. Most importantly, the embracing of the central ideasof the paradigm effectively excluded the idea of envy, a concept of an entirelydifferent order. Latterly, envy has emerged as an anomaly in the literature,but it continues to be excluded from many of the main books and collectionsof papers. It is suggested that a new paradigm which incorporates the envy


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concept is required. This paradigm needs to include modes of functioningthat are intrinsically attacking as well as those that are intrinsically defen-sive; it also needs to include emotions such as envy as well as anxiety. It needsto create conceptual space for ‘social systems as an envious attack’. This thenallows us to consider phenomena where the system itself manifests the prop-erty of envy, and where it needs continuously to recruit people into new roleswhere they can enact envious attacks on behalf of it.

The paper goes on to address the potential for the malignant andpowerful grip that envy may have over our groups, organizations andsocieties. Studies of envy are particularly alarming because they alert us tothe depth of malevolence into which people and social systems may descend.A consideration of envy is often very painful and even frightening. As Joseph(1986) has pointed out, unlike jealousy, envy cannot be cited as a mitigatingcircumstance in the eyes of the law: it is born of unwarranted hatred andmalice felt towards the other. In social systems, envy is especially potentbecause it is often directed at those on whom the social system is most depen-dent: as groups, organizations and societies are intrinsically concerned withinterdependence, this potential for envious destructiveness is enormous. Thedanger, illustrated, for example, by the Chinese Cultural Revolution, is thatsocial connections of any meaningful kind get attacked and dismantled, andthat the social system generates a momentum of spiralling violence anddestruction. The attacks may be directed at anyone who is perceived to havesomething desirable or good and on whom parts of the social system aredependent: most notably this includes attacks on linking, learning and leader-ship, all of which are essential to the survival of our social systems. When weconsider the enormously destructive power of envy, we may conclude thatwe truly live in an age which is ‘after Eden’: there is no neutral space or ‘safehaven’ where we can really be free of the destructive potential of envy. Sucha space does not exist. What we can do, however, is take up the challenge –bequeathed to us by a variety of perspectives including psychoanalysis (Rice,1965; Bion, 1984b) – to use our experience and understanding as a sourceof learning. In this way, we may be able to mitigate the power of envy in our-selves and our social systems.

Acknowledgements

I owe much gratitude to Keith Grint, Eric Miller and Anton Obholzer fortheir supervision of the doctorate which provided the background to thispaper; to Antje Netzer Stein, Catherine Sandler, and the late Barry Palmer forreading drafts; and to William Halton who provided invaluable support in


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clarifying the argument of the paper. I should add that the responsibility forthe views expressed here is entirely my own.

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Mark Stein, PhD, has degrees from the Universities of Warwick, Cam-bridge, and Brunel, and from the London School of Economics. He hasalso studied psychodynamic phenomena at the Tavistock Clinic for overa decade.He has been a research fellow at Brunel University, a researcherand consultant at the Tavistock Institute, and is currently a senior lec-turer at South Bank University and an associate of OPUS. He has under-taken research, teaching and consultancy in the UK, continental Europeand South East Asia.[E-mail: [email protected]]

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after eden - envy and the defenses against anxiety paradigm -- mark stein (2009)

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