Gratitude and its opposites

Fear and envy

I’m Bryan Kam. I endeavour daily to make philosophy accessible and relevant. To that end I write this newsletter and host a podcast called Clerestory. I’m also writing a book called Neither/Nor and I’m a founding member of Liminal Learning. In London, I host a book club, a writing group, and other events. My work looks at how abstract concepts relate to embodied life, and how to use this understanding to transform experience.

Are you feeling grateful today? If not, how do you feel? Might you feel the opposite of grateful? But what is the opposite of gratitude?

Nietzsche (1844–1900) in Beyond Good and Evil implies that it is fear,¹ whereas the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein (1882–1960) argues that it is envy, arising from disrupted intimacy with the mother in infancy.

What is amazing about the religiosity of the ancient Greeks is the enormous abundance of gratitude it exudes: it is a very noble type of man that confronts nature and life in this way.

Later, when the rabble gained the upper hand in Greece, fear became rampant in religion, too—and the ground was prepared for Christianity.—

Nietzsche, BGE, III §49

Nietzsche contrasts the older attitude of gratitude with a newer feeling of fear. I imagine the difference between the Homeric Greeks (say, 8th Century BC) and the Stoics (say, 2nd Century BC). The former seem to be vibing with whatever happens, however violent, whereas the latter seem a lot more worried, even though many of them had easier lives than Achilles.

Nietzsche felt that fear opposed gratitude. Whereas for Klein, envy opposed gratitude. Before we get to their differing definitions of gratitude, what did Klein mean by envy?

For Klein, envy is defined as “the angry feeling that another person possesses and enjoys something desirable — the envious impulse being to take it away or destroy it.” Envy, Klein argues, goes back to infancy. More specifically, after the presence of mother’s breast which feeds the infant, the absence or inconsistency of feeding leads the infant to a feeling of destructive aggression. The infant is envious towards the breast itself, since it has as yet no concept of another person — not even its mother. In a sense, it only requires one person, because it is about acting destructively against an object or situation. Imagine a child kicking over a sandcastle. For Klein, this impulse would be driven by envy.

Klein defines jealousy as being based on envy, but it is more sophisticated feeling, requiring two people. It is concerned “with love that the subject feels is his due and has been taken away, or is in danger of being taken away, from him by his rival. In the everyday conception of jealousy, a man or a woman feels deprived of the loved person by somebody else.”

In the following passage, Klein defines greed. Greed, for Klein, is about “insatiable craving, exceeding what the subject needs and what the object is able and willing to give.” Greed is about taking as much as possible, where as envy is about the desire to “spoil and destroy.”

Because jealousy is rooted in envy, jealousy, too, can be destructive; she looks at the example of Othello, whose jealousy causes him to kill Desdemona, the object of his jealousy. In other words, both envy and jealousy can be self-defeating, because they can destroy the desired object, relation, or situation. At the same time, for Klein, there may be an element of envy which actually produces or protects the ego. The question is how to get the right level of envy to allow the ego to become independent, but without allowing it to destroy the desired object, or the relation with the desired object.

This is from her most famous essay, Envy and Gratitude (1957; p182):²

Shakespeare’s Othello, in his jealousy, destroys the object he loves and this, in my view, is characteristic of what Crabb described as an ‘ignoble passion of jealousy’ —greed stimulated by fear. A significant reference to jealousy as an inherent quality of the mind occurs in the same play:

But jealous souls will not be answer’d so;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous; ’tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself.

It could be said that the very envious person is insatiable, he can never be satisfied because his envy stems from within and therefore always finds an object to focus on. This shows also the close connection between jealousy, greed and envy.

For Klein, envy is a pathology arising out of experiences in infancy, where intermittent or inconsistent affection leads to persecutory anxiety. The Othello example shows that this anxiety arises from early childhood neglect, and can interfere with relationships in adulthood. The Othello case is extreme; he desires Desdemona, but his jealousy actually leads him to kill her. But jealousy and envy can have corrosive and destructive effects even when they fall far short of murder. They stem from inadequate intimacy, but they self-defeatingly block intimacy and trust as well.

Gratitude can help mitigate the destructive effects of envy. Here’s how she describes their opposition. Continuing on in Envy and Gratitude (p187-190):

For it is enjoyment and the gratitude to which it gives rise that mitigate destructive impulses, envy, and greed. To look at it from another angle: greed, envy, and persecutory anxiety, which are bound up with each other, inevitably increase each other. The feeling of the harm done by envy, the great anxiety that stems from this, and the resulting uncertainty about the goodness of the object, have the effect of increasing greed and destructive impulses. Whenever the object is felt to be good after all, it is all the more greedily desired and taken in. This applies to food as well.

The sense of deprivation that an infant feels when the breast is withdrawn leads to an impulse towards destructive envy, and to a feeling of persecution. If this goes on too long, then when the child is fed again, it can be come greedy, taking more than it needs. It doesn’t require much imagination to see how this can lead to eating disorders and other forms of addiction.

Klein also thinks that excessive envy, which might be partly innate but can also be caused by maternal disturbances in feeding, can prevent an infant from enjoyment and gratitude. In other words, gratitude can impede envy, but envy can also impede gratitude.

For Klein, the first enjoyment for the infant is that of being fed. But because she thinks that all pleasures are derivative from this original process of feeding, too many problems in the feeding process can preclude the enjoyment of anything — and gratitude for anything — later in life. This is what makes early gratitude so important:

Gratitude is essential in building up the relation to the good object and underlies also the appreciation of goodness in others and in oneself. Gratitude is rooted in the emotions and attitudes that arise in the earliest stage of infancy, when for the baby the mother is the one and only object. I have referred to this early bond as the basis for all later relations with one loved person.

Because the infant will want to be fed, sometimes not be fed when it wants, then eventually be fed again, the oscillations between envy and gratitude are inevitable and not something to be avoided entirely. Too much envy can prevent gratitude later in life, but she also notes that too little envy (i.e., always being fed immediately) can also spoil the child:

It is of interest that Abraham mentions, among the factors: which underlie manic-depressive illness, both excessive frustration and too great indulgence. For frustration, if not excessive, is also a stimulus for adaptation to the external world and for the development of the sense of reality. In fact, a certain amount of frustration followed by gratification might give the infant the feeling that he has been able to cope with his anxiety.

The key is to get the balance right. Some frustration is required to internalise the fact that the world will not always bend to one’s will. At the same time, too much frustration may lead to a basic sense that the world is unsafe. A balance between the two should allow the infant to develop an internal sense of security, which, over development, can become increasingly independent of circumstances:

If the undisturbed enjoyment in being fed is frequently experienced, the introjection³ of the good breast comes about with relative security. A full gratification at the breast means that the infant feels he has received from his loved object a unique gift which he wants to keep. This is the basis of gratitude. Gratitude is closely linked with the trust in good figures. This includes first of all the ability to accept and assimilate the loved primal object (not only as a source of food) without greed and envy interfering too much; for greedy internalization disturbs the relation to the object.

So a lack of gratitude can lead to lack of trust. When I read what Klein refers to as “good figures” I think of “authority figures,” and this made me wonder if a lack of gratitude could lead to acts of rebellion or the rejection of authority. Although I rarely misbehaved outwardly, I’ve always had an internal reaction against authority figures, and it was not obvious to me that increasing my gratitude might be used to counteract this tendency when it is undesirable. It’s fine to be sceptical of authority, for example when it leads me to insist on egalitarian interactions, but at other times it can be an impediment.

A lack of gratitude can also damage expressions of generosity. For those with gratitude, generosity can be offered without expecting anything in return. But for those whose gratitude is insufficient, generosity can come to require displays of appreciation and gratitude, without which an individual will become angry:

Gratitude is closely bound up with generosity. Inner wealth derives from having assimilated the good object so that the individual becomes able to share its gifts with others. This makes it possible to introject a more friendly outer world, and a feeling of enrichment ensues. Even the fact that generosity is often insufficiently appreciated does not necessarily undermine the ability to give. By contrast, with people in whom this feeling of inner wealth and strength is not sufficiently established, bouts of generosity are often followed by an exaggerated need for appreciation and gratitude, and consequently by persecutory anxieties of having been impoverished and robbed.

Here let’s look at Nietzsche’s definition of gratitude, because Klein’s “inner wealth” could be likened to Nietzsche’s notion of “aristocracy.” For Nietzsche, aristocracy and gratitude go together; the aristocrat is grateful for life’s abundance. Elsewhere, in The Gay Science and The Will to Power, Nietzsche links the feeling of gratitude to the will to power, and for him living with gratitude is also a show of strength. This is because he links this strength to an ability to repay a debt of disturbance.

What kind of disturbance? For Nietzsche, A benefactor giving a benefit actually obtrudes on one’s autonomy. The noble action is to repay one’s debts, in this case, not with vengeance but with gratitude. It is for this reason that Nietzsche regards gratitude as a “milder form of revenge” (Human, All Too Human, I.2, §44). He notes in that same passage that “Swift suggested that men are grateful in the same degree as they are revengeful.”

This does not really align with Klein’s description of gratitude. For Klein, gratitude amounts to the ability to enjoy an object and express some of that that enjoyment back to its source. For Nietzsche, gratitude comes from receiving a benefit, which indebts one to one’s benefactor — and gratitude is the non-violent way to repay that debt. Exprssing too much gratitude, for Nietzsche, is a sign of weakness, whereas I don’t think Klein has an equivalent notion of excessive gratitude. At the same time, I read into Nietzsche and Klein the idea that gratitude can undermine fear and envy (respectively).

For Klein, gratitude can impede envy, and vice versa. But because gratitude is closely linked with enjoyment, envy can also destroy all capacity for enjoyment. Klein therefore considers envy to be the worst of all sins, because it has the capacity to spitefully destroy all that is good:

Strong envy of the feeding breast interferes with the capacity for complete enjoyment, and thus undermines the development of gratitude. There are very pertinent psychological reasons why envy ranks among the seven ‘deadly sins’. I would even suggest that it is unconsciously felt to be the greatest sin of all, because it spoils and harms the good object which is the source of life. This view is consistent with the view described by Chaucer in The Parsons Tale: ‘It is certain that envy is the worst sin that is; for all other sins are sins only against one virtue, whereas envy is against all virtue and against all goodness.’ The feeling of having injured and destroyed the primal object impairs the individual’s trust in the sincerity of his later relations and makes him doubt his capacity for love and goodness.

This destructive impulse, which she links with “persecutory anxiety,” comes from early disturbances in relations with the first “object” (which for Klein, is first with the breast, and later with the mother as a person).

Disturbances in this area manifest as an inability to securely attach to the carer, to maintain gratitude. This can lead to “craving for power and prestige” (which I read as grandiosity), or “the need to pacify persecutors at any cost” (which I read as people-pleasing). I read envy itself as an act of spiteful and destructive defiance. I would also link her notion of greed with impatience.

My observations have shown me that significant changes in character, which at close quarters reveal themselves as character deterioration, are much more likely to happen in persons who have not established their first object securely and are not capable of maintaining gratitude towards it. When in those people persecutory anxiety increases for internal or external reasons, they lose completely their primal good object, or rather its substitutes, be it persons or values. The processes that underlie this change are a regressive return to early splitting mechanisms and disintegration. Since this is a matter of degree, such a disintegration, though ultimately it strongly affects character, does not necessarily lead to manifest illness. The craving for power and prestige, or the need to pacify persecutors at any cost, are among the aspects of the character changes I have in mind.

Nietzsche observes an opposition between gratitude and fear, whereas Klein observes an opposition between gratitude and envy. For Nietzsche, gratitude is a characteristic of the nobility, who embrace life and are grateful for its abundance, whereas fear of scarcity tends to crowd out gratitude, or to make it too obsequious.⁴ The aristocratic attitude is one of gratitude, and the aristocrat expresses gratitude towards benefactors in the same unselfconscious way that he would undertake an act of vengeance (Nietzsche repeatedly links gratitude and revenge).

Klein links gratitude with love and the capacity for enjoyment, whereas she links envy with jealousy, hatred, greed, and persecutory anxiety. According to Klein the best way to develop gratitude and love is through secure attachment in infancy. But obviously not everyone has that luxury. Her model lends support to approaches like IFS which emphasise “reparenting.” An approach like this, with or without a therapist, could replace psychoanalytic “transference” with a process which first seeks to establish safety, then focuses on building skills of self-soothing and gratitude, which are the conditions required for the eventual attainment of enjoyment and love.

I’ve never been particularly consistent with making gratitude lists, but I’ve experimented with describing what I’m grateful for in my morning pages, and I do think that it reduces both fear and anger, and probably envy as well.

A friend suggested to me that it might be important to emphasise gratitude towards people over gratitude for possessions or unearned experiences. This is supported by Klein’s model, which has gratitude redirecting feelings of enjoyment back to their source. From Nietzsche, we might take the idea that we should pursue the feeling of an “enormous abundance of gratitude” for life, and also emphasise displays of gratitude to people at the right time, at the right level. To combine Klein and Nietzsche with modern research, we might cultivate a feeling of gratitude towards life and towards others, with the correct expression of this gratitude, after a process of deep reflection.

I’d love to hear what you think.

Bryan

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Melanie Klein, 1900.

1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

2. Klein, Melanie. Envy and Gratitude, and Other Works, 1946-1963. Free Press ed. The Writings of Melanie Klein 3. New York: Free Press, 1984.

3. For Klein, projection is the process of externalizing parts of one’s inner world, whereas introjection is the process of internalizing parts of the outer world. The infant experiences both the frustration of the absence of the breast, and the enjoyment of the presence of the breast. From these experiences, she’s saying, the infant should introject (basically internalize) the sense of safety that comes with being fed, as well as the sense of survivable anxiety which comes with not being fed whenever one wishes.

4. Human, All Too Human, §366: “Nobility and gratitude. — A noble soul will be glad to feel obligated to gratitude and will not anxiously avoid those occasions on which such obligation arises; it will likewise also subsequently be composed in the expression of gratitude; whereas baser souls resist all becoming obligated or are afterwards excessive and all too sedulous in their expressions of gratitude. The latter is also to be found in people of baser origin or lowly position: a favour shown to them seems to them a miracle of grace.”