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Human Relations
[0018-7267(2000)53:2]
Volume 53(2): 193–211: 010558
Copyright © 2000
The Tavistock Institute ®
SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA,
New Delhi

After Eden: Envy and the defences against

anxiety 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, that
Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him.
(Genesis, Ch. iv)

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194 Human Relations 53(2)

After the fall of man and the exile from the Garden of Eden, the Bible tells
us that Eve bore Adam two sons: Cain, a tiller of the ground, and Abel, a
shepherd. 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 on
a 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 not
respect 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 the
departure from Eden, and one that pivots on the issue of envy. Although it
does not involve a group according to the conventional psychological defi-
nition (Mullins, 1996), at the level of myth it is about five characters that do
constitute a group: God, who judges Cain’s and Abel’s sacrifices, observes
Cain’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, whose
earlier sin led to their exile from Eden and inaugurated moral learning as a
central theme of the Bible. It is in the context of this group that the tragic
sequence of events took place, events which centred on God’s judgement that
Abel’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-inspired
fratricide. It was tragic not just for Abel but for Cain himself: through his
fratricide he lost his sole companion and sibling, his only potential trading
partner, and the only other descendant of Adam and Eve.
That envy lies at the core of the Bible’s first account of family or group
life following the fall and the exile from Eden is of considerable moment. In
this paper, it is suggested that the primitive envy illustrated by the story of
Cain and Abel is of fundamental significance in groups, organizations and
society 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 envy
concept, the argument here is located within the debates framed by the Klein-
ian school, particularly those framed by the ideas of Wilfred Bion and by
Melanie Klein herself. The sequence of the development of their ideas is
important. If we look first at the psychoanalytic study of the individual in the
writings of Klein, we find considerable focus on anxieties (Klein,
1935/1975a, 1940/1975b) and – what could broadly be termed – the
defences employed against them, especially splitting and projective identifi-
cation (Klein, 1946/1975c). Since approximately the late 1950s, this school
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Stein After Eden 195

of thought took a new turn with the elaboration of the envy concept by
Melanie 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 the
Klein–Bion tradition has focused on the psychoanalytic study of social
systems, which includes groups, organizations and society in general. This
focus has drawn directly on Klein’s ideas concerning anxiety and the various
ways we have of protecting ourselves against it: the central organizing theme
of this genre has been that these social systems function defensively in order
to ward off anxieties which their members are unable to bear. This idea –
developed in two key papers by Jaques (1955) and Menzies (1960) – thus
shaped a paradigm of enquiry into this area.
What is striking is that a fundamental lacuna may be observed in this
literature on groups, organizations and society: while envy has become a
quintessential concept in the literature on individuals, up until recently, it has
been virtually absent from the literature on social systems. It is only latterly
that envy has emerged as an anomaly of some significance in relation to the
paradigm. This paper focuses on this omission. It argues that – especially
when it is unconscious – envy in groups, organizations and society deserves
considerably greater attention than it has received hitherto. It proposes that
envy constitutes a phenomenon quite different in kind from those explored
under the ‘defences against anxiety’ paradigm, and examines why it was
excluded from the paradigm. It then provides group, organizational and
societal examples which illustrate the notion of a culture shaped by envy. It
concludes 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 the
defences against anxiety notion is conceptually grounded in the psycho-
analytic study of individuals, it would be helpful to begin with Klein’s view
of the nature of anxiety in the individual. Klein distinguished between two
types of anxiety: persecutory anxiety (Klein, 1935/1975a) is a primitive
experience involving paranoid fears of being attacked and annihilated, while
depressive anxiety fundamentally concerns the fear of the loss or death of a
loved object (Klein, 1935/1975a, 1940/1975b). These two types of anxiety
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196 Human Relations 53(2)

are seen to play a central role throughout the life of an individual, and to be
subject to a range of defence mechanisms which keep them largely located in
the unconscious.
Psychoanalytic studies of groups and organizations in the Klein–Bion
tradition have invariably emerged from these ideas. Together with Bion’s idea
of the basic assumption (explored later in this paper), the most cogent formu-
lation of these concepts is by Jaques (1955) and Menzies (1960). The view
postulated by Jaques and Menzies suggests that anxieties and defences
against them are as present in groups, organizations and society as they are
in individuals. While primitive feelings and anxieties may occur only within
the minds of individuals, it is suggested that individuals within social systems
may collude by collectively and unconsciously designing defensive systems
and structures which protect them from such feelings, ensuring that they
remain unconscious. Menzies’ 1960 study of student nurses is a classic in the
field. Here she argues that nurses were protected from anxiety by being
denied close contact with ill or dying patients. This was supported, for
example, by the hospital system of task allocation which resulted in a wide
variety of staff being responsible for any one patient; by excessive movement
of nurses between different wards and different hospitals; and by a culture
in which patients were identified not by name but by bed number or by
disease. Menzies concludes that – to the detriment of nurse and patient alike
– the nurse’s training promoted a systematic avoidance rather than a working
through of the anxieties implicit in the nurse’s career.
The concept of a social system as a defence against anxiety had a
powerful impact on a small but significant community of scholars. To use
Kuhn’s (1970) terms, it established itself as a paradigm and initiated a period
of normal science which was extremely fruitful. The Tavistock Institute’s
major piece of work undertaken under the leadership of Jaques (1951) with
the Glacier Metal engineering company is one notable example. So is Miller
and Gwynne’s (1974) study of residential institutions for the chronically ill
and 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 help
to substantiate the prevailing concepts of the paradigm.

The appropriation of basic assumptions into the defences

paradigm

If the defences against anxiety paradigm became predominant, what of Bion’s

equally important theory of basic assumptions? Let us examine this concept
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Stein After Eden 197

briefly. Bion argued that a group may share an unconscious basic assump-
tion which undermines its capacity for rational task activity. He identified
three types of basic assumptions. First, there is the basic assumption of depen-
dence, in which the group unconsciously assumes that one of its members is
uniquely able to look after and satisfy its needs. Second, there is the basic
assumption of pairing, which occurs when the group shares the unconscious
belief that two members will join together to produce a leader. The third basic
assumption is that of fight–flight in which the group shares the unconscious
belief 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 of
scholars understood the relation between the basic assumptions and the
concept of defences against anxiety? Second, does this accurately represent
Bion’s view of the basic assumptions? There can be little doubt that Bion’s
formulation 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 a
therapy group which holds a basic assumption concerning the role of friend-
liness and how it may offer the group protection from the powerful sense of
anxiety which dominates it (Bion, 1961). Bion also discusses at some length
the 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 terms
of the defences against anxiety argument.
However, a further look at Bion’s exposition suggests that this is only
a partial reading of the meaning of the ‘basic assumption’. In Experiences in
groups and other papers (1961) he wrote:

I introduce some concepts new to psycho-analysis . . . because I wanted

to see if a start disencumbered by previous theories might lead to a
point at which my views of the group and psycho-analytic views of the
individual 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 in
the concept has to do with the emotion of anxiety and with defences against
it, 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 and
other papers (1961). In discussing these ideas, he spoke, for example, of the
‘manipulation’ (p. 148) implicit in the activities of the basic assumption
group, of it being ‘hostile’ to development (p. 159) and of the ‘hatred’ of
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198 Human Relations 53(2)

learning by experience (p. 86). These terms are not exclusively concerned
with anxiety or with defences against them.
However, those aspects of basic assumption activity that go beyond
anxiety and defensiveness began to emerge more clearly only with Bion’s later
brief exploration of the concept of the ‘parasitic group’ (Bion, 1984a).
Clearly, the parasitic group has all the characteristics of a basic assumption
group: 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 the
group and its relation to the ‘mystic’, the person who is either felt to be a
respected genius or a despised tyrant. Insofar as it is infused with evil and
hatred, the basic assumption concerns emotions other than anxiety and
modes of operation that go beyond the merely defensive. ‘In the parasitic
relationship’, wrote Bion, ‘the product of the association is something that
destroys 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 clearer
if we look at other definitions of parasitism. Although he studied individuals
rather than groups, Rosenfeld’s conceptual development of the notion of par-
asitism occurred around the same time as Bion’s, within the same intellectual
framework 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 period
of normal science which focused on establishing its own concepts, and had
little interest in others. ‘Normal science’, argues Kuhn, ‘does not aim at
novelties 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 it
became 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 how
she developed and extended it. For the sake of simplicity, the notion of envy
is 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 may
experience towards the self. The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary suggests two
key aspects to the envy concept. First, envy involves the relation to another
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Stein After Eden 199

who one perceives to be more fortunate than oneself. Second, envy involves
feelings of ill-will or ‘mortification’ towards this person. Here immediately
lies one of the most striking characteristics of envy, one that sets it apart from
the emotion of anxiety: whatever anxieties one may feel, envious feelings of
ill-will and the desire to see harm done to the other are conceptually quite
distinct from the anxieties one may feel about oneself or about the other. This
of course does not preclude the possibility or even likelihood that envy and
anxiety may occur together in the same person. However, the key issue is that
the 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 the
following aspects. Third, these feelings of ill-will are often unconscious. This
suggests that we are frequently unaware of the extent to which we feel hateful
and envious of another whom we believe has something special. Neither are
we aware of the extent to which we may be involved in destructive activities
which 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 led
her to the view that a powerful envious desire to retaliate may be evoked by
the experience of dependence. Returning to Cain and Abel, one of the most
poignant aspects of the story is that – in his fratricide – Cain killed the person
he would have been most likely to depend on: Abel would have been his only
potential trading partner, and his only sibling and companion. Ironically,
therefore, the envious attack invariably results in damage to both the
attacked other and to the self.
Fifth, and related to the above point concerning dependence, envy
involves a violent attack and is not concerned with self-preservation. It is thus
different from the notion of rivalry which implies a form of competition in
which one attempts to strengthen and enhance one’s own position vis-a-vis
the other. It is also in this sense diametrically opposed to defences against
anxiety: while a defence against anxiety is felt (consciously or unconsciously)
to protect the person, the envious attack is inspired by a malevolence which
has nothing to do with self-protection. Another way to put this is that, while
defensiveness involves a relationship with something or someone experienced
as bad or threatening to the self, envy involves an unwarranted attack on
something or someone experienced to be good in some way. So, although
defensiveness and envy may empirically occur together, the key point here is
that conceptually they are entirely distinct.
Klein’s publication in 1957 of her ideas on envy in individuals had an
immediate impact on scholarship in the field, despite some controversy over
the term (Joffe, 1969). Two important factors contributed to this. One was
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200 Human Relations 53(2)

that Klein argued that envy helped to elucidate certain phenomena psycho-
analysts had been struggling with ever since Freud developed his first
concepts and techniques. In particular, Freud’s pivotal concept of the death
instinct (1926/1953–73), as well as Klein’s own notion of aggressivity (see
Klein, 1975e) would – she argued – be regarded somewhat differently in the
light of the concept of envy. Second, some of the most prominent Kleinian
scholars – such as Rosenfeld (1952) and Segal (1950) – were working along
similar 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 clear
that 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 the
concept 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 important
psychoanalytic views in the latter part of the 20th century – are unthinkable
without 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 of
Kleinian inspired studies of groups, organizations and society. Specifically,
there is remarkably little on the subject between the 1950s and the early
1980s. It is striking, for example, that the concept makes no appearance at
all in Colman and Bexton’s (1975) Group relations reader 1, which contains
the most comprehensive collection published in the field prior to the 1980s.
It is also entirely absent from the only book presenting an overview of the
field 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 of
the most influential authors in the field as late as the 1980s and 1990s. The
term makes no appearance, for example, in Menzies Lyth’s impressive two-
volume collection of papers (1988, 1989). This is despite her intensive
involvement in the world of Kleinian psychoanalysis at the time, and her
insightful understanding of defences. It also receives no mention in several
valuable and important books published around the same time, such as
Hirschhorn (1988), Shapiro and Carr (1991), and Miller (1993). Perhaps
even more striking is its omission from two key collections of edited works
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Stein After Eden 201

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 the
Tavistock Institute, and Hirschhorn and Barnett’s The psychodynamics of
organizations (1993).

Explanations for the late arrival of envy

How, then, does one explain the curious phenomenon of the late arrival of
the envy concept in the literature on social systems? One factor is that the
key innovators in the field formulated their most influential and original ideas
prior 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. Most
notable among these were, first, Jaques’ classic paper (Jaques, 1955). Then
there was Menzies work during the 1940s and 1950s using similar concepts
to Jaques, and published in 1960 (Menzies, 1960). Finally, there was Bion’s
concept of the basic assumption group. While this notion – as is argued above
– is somewhat broader than the defences against anxiety idea, it too predates
Klein’s envy concept: the book Experiences in groups and other papers (Bion,
1961) comprises seven papers which were first published in Human Relations
between 1948 and 1951, and a paper ‘Group dynamics: A re-view’, which
was first published in the International Journal of Psycho-analysis in 1952.
Conceptualized well before 1957 and with no explicit reference to envy, these
works shaped the field of the psychoanalytic study of social systems for many
decades to follow.
In searching for an explanation, we need to go further than this: we
need to turn to the history and philosophy of science. Thomas Kuhn (1970)
has argued that revolutionary scientific ideas are simultaneously productive
and restrictive of development. On the one hand, they define a discourse by
providing concepts which may then be examined in empirical settings by a
generation of scholars. Once the paradigm has been formulated, a period of
normal science sets in during which the paradigm’s core concepts are further
substantiated and explored by these scholars. The concepts are fruitful to the
extent that time after time researchers are able to provide new empirical
meaning to them in a variety of scientific contexts. However, the very utility
and force of these concepts lead to the exclusion of other concepts and other
empirical 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 sort
of conspiracy, but rather a collective inability to recognize phenomena from
outside the paradigm. It is only now that envy as a phenomenon has begun
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202 Human Relations 53(2)

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

The need for a new paradigm

In articulating the new paradigm, several points should be noted. First, it is

clear that some of the essential empirical groundwork for the paradigm has
already 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 the
requisite change at the conceptual level.
Second, the idea of envy needs to supplement rather than replace the
idea of defences against anxiety of the existing paradigm. For clinicians
working with envy, this hardly needs stating, as it is clear that anxiety and
envy are interrelated in complex ways. One obvious factor here is that a
social system may be characterized by both envy and defences against
anxiety, simultaneously, at different times, at different levels, or in different
parts 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 complex
phenomena 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 to
go beyond both of these. It is essential that the new paradigm focuses on
modes of activity that are attacking, and not only those that are defensive; it
is also essential that it allows for a range of emotions other than anxiety, most
notably that of envy. Envy, however, is not the only emotion that may fit into
this category; other relevant emotions, not explored here, are those of hatred
and greed, both of which may be intrinsically of an attacking rather than
defensive nature.

Social systems as an envious attack

The new paradigm, it is proposed, should encompass the idea that the social
system itself – and not just the individuals within it – may be characterized
by a quality of enviously attacking that which is perceived to be good or
desirable. This characteristic may be present only briefly; alternatively, it may
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Stein After Eden 203

last for a substantial period of time, leading to a chaotic and endemically

malfunctioning 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 new
members into certain parts of the system, and these new members are con-
sciously or unconsciously tasked with the role of engaging in new envious
attacks on others.
In such a system, the envious attack may be directed at several types of
targets. First, positive and healthy links with others are detested and subject
to envious attack: as a consequence all interpersonal contact is felt to be
poisonous and malign. As Bion emphasizes (1959/1967), it is not just the other
who is detested, but the very concept of a link, association or bond between
two parties who are interdependent. While it is difficult to paraphrase Bion’s
complex 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 the
learning process. Everything associated with learning, including its products,
those who deliver it, and the very concept of learning itself, is therefore
detested and enviously attacked and undermined. Third, it is not possible to
tolerate leadership because this too evokes feelings of excessive dependence
and envy of those who may be seen to be in a superior position and whose
work is essential for the social system’s survival: leadership is thus enviously
attacked 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 system
are dependent. All therefore provide raw material for envy.
In illustrating these phenomena, a sequence of examples will examine
envy of the following types: as a property of the group; as a property of an
institution or major parts of it; and as a property of society. A good example
of envy as a property of a group is found in Schlapobersky (1994). This was
a group of seven members who had been meeting twice weekly over many
years for the purpose of group analysis. Having shared a great deal together
over the years, these members were by now very close, working hard to
understand each other’s difficulties and affirm each other’s success. In one
session, a member, who had been struggling with his parents’ envious attacks
on his youth and individuation, reveals that he had just reached a crucial
financial target in his business. This considerable achievement does not earn
the regard it merits from group members, whose responses remain rather
limp. The conversation moves to a woman in the group who is expecting a
baby. This pregnancy has already had a remarkable effect on the group and
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204 Human Relations 53(2)

on the two other women members in particular. The woman had struggled
to 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 the
group, and this is only relieved following an interpretation to this effect by
the 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 a
group of lecturers at a public sector educational institution struggled to
organize a money-raising short course out of term-time. Their first major set-
back occurred when the catering department refused to provide tea and
coffee to course participants. This was followed by the maintenance depart-
ment closing down the toilet facilities for maintenance work during the
course, despite requests from the course organizers for this to be delayed. The
participants 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 difficulties
between these departments is that – following earlier competitive tendering
by private sector organizations – both the catering and the maintenance
departments were about to be closed down. While one may have some sym-
pathy with their difficult position, these events suggest that the envy which
was 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, envious

social system

If the above illustrate the existence of an attacking, envious culture in groups

and organizations, such phenomena may also be manifest at a much broader
societal level. The example explored here is that of the Chinese Cultural
Revolution (1965–69), during which time – it will be argued – the political,
economic and social life of an entire country most powerfully manifested the
envious attacking qualities mentioned above. The magnitude of the disaster
of the Cultural Revolution is already well established (Sung An, 1972; Mac-
Farquhar, 1983; Fairbank, 1986; Thurston, 1988). Over the course of three
and half years, the Chinese Cultural Revolution left little unscathed: adminis-
tration at virtually every level and in every sector collapsed; the education
system was all but destroyed; and much of personal and family life was
ruined by denunciations, ritual humiliations, torture and murder. As well as
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Stein After Eden 205

an estimated 400,000 who died of maltreatment, a staggering half a billion

Chinese people experienced ruinous intrusions into their lives. The devasta-
tion was long-lasting: the decade following the initial onslaught has been
called 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 the
Cultural Revolution. First, it involved an indiscriminate and violent attack
on learning. Mao closed down the country’s entire middle-school and uni-
versity system, instructing the students to form themselves into bands of Red
Guards. 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 the
destruction 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. School
teachers and university professors were sent en masse to join the peasantry
in the countryside; books were burnt; and libraries destroyed. For a decade,
virtually the only ‘learning’ of an entire country was the ritualized learning
off by heart and repetition of the sayings of Mao. Such was the assault on
learning, thinking and creativity that anyone who was either involved in edu-
cation or showed signs of having thoughts of their own was seen to require
public humiliation, exile, torture or death (Thurston, 1988).
Second, the Cultural Revolution involved a deeply damaging attack on
linking, on all personal and family relationships. There were several aspects
to this. One was simply the number of people who were murdered, incar-
cerated, or sent to the countryside. Another, more specifically, was that these
losses and separations caused a substantial number of children to be left
without parental care. These children frequently formed gangs who roamed
the streets scavenging and stealing food, or who found they were able to vent
their anger by joining the Red Guards. A major part of a generation of chil-
dren thus suffered dislocation, lack of parenting and schooling, and found
their only refuge in the institutionalized violence of the Red Guard. Another
aspect of the attacks on linking was the Red Guards’ deliberate destruction
of all meaningful forms of social activity. This is poignantly illustrated in
Chang’s celebrated autobiography Wild swans (1993), in which she and her
teenage Red Guard colleagues shut down the teahouses of the entire province
of Sichuan, where she lived. The teahouses, which had been virtually the only
places for social life for the ordinary citizens of Sichuan, remained closed for
15 years. A further aspect was that, as the Red Guard rampaged through
society, so individuals increasingly began to fear for their own safety. Guilt
by association, one of the guiding principles of the Red Guard, led people to
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206 Human Relations 53(2)

believe they could save themselves by denouncing those closest to them; in

some cases, with the threat of torture or their own death hanging over them,
they felt forced to make such denunciations. Employees therefore denounced
bosses and other employees; children denounced parents; friends denounced
friends; 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 with
each 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 the
Politburo 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 to
attack and take over the running of all institutions at national and local level.
With no prior experience of administration or leadership, they appointed
themselves to run all manner of organizations: public utilities, hospitals, local
government and industry. Subsequently, most of the Red Guard were them-
selves denounced by others, and there was continual fighting around the
endemically 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 on
the remarkable exclusion for several decades of the envy concept from
psychoanalytic studies of social systems. Noting the centrality of the envy
concept in Kleinian psychoanalytic writings on individuals, it draws the
reader’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 of
Bion, Menzies and Jaques during the 1950s provided the basis for a para-
digm which centred on the notion of ‘social systems as a defence against
anxiety’. This paradigm was both productive and restrictive of conceptual
development in the field. Most importantly, the embracing of the central ideas
of the paradigm effectively excluded the idea of envy, a concept of an entirely
different order. Latterly, envy has emerged as an anomaly in the literature,
but it continues to be excluded from many of the main books and collections
of papers. It is suggested that a new paradigm which incorporates the envy
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Stein After Eden 207

concept is required. This paradigm needs to include modes of functioning

that 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 needs
to create conceptual space for ‘social systems as an envious attack’. This then
allows us to consider phenomena where the system itself manifests the prop-
erty of envy, and where it needs continuously to recruit people into new roles
where they can enact envious attacks on behalf of it.
The paper goes on to address the potential for the malignant and
powerful grip that envy may have over our groups, organizations and
societies. Studies of envy are particularly alarming because they alert us to
the 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 mitigating
circumstance in the eyes of the law: it is born of unwarranted hatred and
malice felt towards the other. In social systems, envy is especially potent
because it is often directed at those on whom the social system is most depen-
dent: as groups, organizations and societies are intrinsically concerned with
interdependence, this potential for envious destructiveness is enormous. The
danger, illustrated, for example, by the Chinese Cultural Revolution, is that
social connections of any meaningful kind get attacked and dismantled, and
that the social system generates a momentum of spiralling violence and
destruction. The attacks may be directed at anyone who is perceived to have
something desirable or good and on whom parts of the social system are
dependent: most notably this includes attacks on linking, learning and leader-
ship, all of which are essential to the survival of our social systems. When we
consider the enormously destructive power of envy, we may conclude that
we truly live in an age which is ‘after Eden’: there is no neutral space or ‘safe
haven’ where we can really be free of the destructive potential of envy. Such
a 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 source
of 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 for
their supervision of the doctorate which provided the background to this
paper; to Antje Netzer Stein, Catherine Sandler, and the late Barry Palmer for
reading drafts; and to William Halton who provided invaluable support in
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208 Human Relations 53(2)

clarifying the argument of the paper. I should add that the responsibility for
the 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 has
also studied psychodynamic phenomena at the Tavistock Clinic for over
a decade. He has been a research fellow at Brunel University, a researcher
and 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 Europe
and South East Asia.
[E-mail: steinmk@sbu.ac.uk]