The paradoxical envy: When the spared child yearns for the victim's attention

“ Even in its more moderate and normal form, jealousy is a torment, for distrust and suspicion poison love. We often hear of justified jealousy; I maintain, on the contrary, that jealousy is never justified, and that it is only the brutal stupidity of an atavistic heritage, or a pathological symptom. A reasonable man who has doubts as to the fidelity of his wife has certainly the right to assure himself of their correctness. ”

“ When I found that the neurotics represent regressive stages of development, I conceived jealousy to be a primitive feeling of hatred, characteristic of man in his primordial state. Paranoia discloses the primary tendencies which are glossed over by our cultural development. One’s true character betrays itself in one’s emotions. Jealousy shows us the true inner man in all his passionate cravings and his hidden desires. ”

“ Jealousy is an infantile feeling. Its appearance in later years always signifies a regression to infantile attitudes. The homosexual spreads his hatred from one persons to the whole sex under the form of jealousy. 293Let us assume that he loves the father insofar as he is at all capable of loving. The mother is looked upon as a rival. With the formulation of that attitude, all other women become likewise potential rivals, capable of robbing him of his father’s affection. Therefore he hates all women,—the subject is on the road to homosexual neurosis. ”

“ Failing to receive it, jealousy is all too apt to seize him, and, out of jealousy, nervous symptoms or character kinks are a probable result—symptoms and kinks which may, perhaps, never be entirely overcome.
What, then, is the moral of all this? What practical suggestions may be made that will help parents to cope with the problem of children's jealousy? For one thing, and most important, there must be no showing of favouritism, if you have more than one child. By your whole attitude towards your children you must make plain to them that each one ought to be, and is, equally dear to you. ”

“ Should the twentieth-century theories be correct, such a brain as his would have been far healthier if the stage of happy ignorance had been extended until he was at least twice as old. Spoiled by his parents, the share of attentions he received from them provoked, naturally enough, the jealousy and resentment of his brothers and sisters, while his strange ways made him the unhappy butt of his school-fellows. ”

“ Likewise, some children, and particularly children [119] of an inferior mentality or those handicapped by physical defects responsible for a seeming or real neglect of them by parents and playmates, will, under the influence of jealousy, become so disturbed nervously as to indulge in eccentricities of conduct, having for their object the compelling of the attention they feel they have been denied. For example, jealousy often is at the root of the pathological lying of neurotic children, who, on occasion, do not hesitate to bring outrageous charges against innocent persons. ”

“ How could I plead for Edith, after being silenced by such arguments? And how could I tell her that I had interceded for her in vain? I never imagined before that a sister's love could be jealous; but the same hereditary passion which was transmitted to his bosom through a father's blood, reigned in hers, though in a gentler form.
Every one who has studied human nature must have observed predominant family traits, as marked as the attributes of different trees and blossoms,—traits which, descending from parent to children, individualize them from the great family of mankind. ”

“ In some grades of present-day life I don't think there's such a heap of change as you'd guess. The conditions prevail, only the weapons and things are different. However, that's by the way. The thing that requires careful study is how far filial duty is justified.
"Filial duty is a pretty arbitrary thing when a man who can really think looks into it. I maintain that obligation is too much imposed upon offspring. I contend they don't owe a thing to their parents. It's the parents who owe to the offspring. ”

“ But, after all, the great cause of the sorrows of childhood is unquestionably the mismanagement of parents. You hear a great deal about parents who spoil their children by excessive kindness; but I venture to think that a greater number of children are spoiled by stupidity and cruelty on the part of their parents. You may find parents who, having started from a humble origin, have attained to wealth, and who, instead of being glad to think that their children are better off than they themselves were, exhibit a diabolical jealousy of their children. ”

“ Back of the neurosis the motive of which is to worry the old father, to irritate him and force him to pay attention to the unsuccessful son, stands hidden his passionate love of the father, though he writes him scolding letters, 20 sheets long, and threatens to shoot him, should he dare cut down his rightful inheritance. A certain memory trace leads to various childhood fancies resembling the affairs with boys already mentioned. ”

“ In others, obstinacy plants itself like a rock, which the winds and waves of opinion cannot move. In a few, jealousy coils itself with lengthening fold, which, like the serpent that wrapped itself round Laocoon and his sons, makes parents and children its unhappy victims. ”

“ Parents, through their misguided sympathy, often connive at filial disobedience. Their kindness is most unkind. Their parental love issues forth as a mere burst of feeling, unguided by either reason or law. Hence, their sentimental hearts become an asylum for filial delinquency and criminality. This is no proof of love, but the opposite; for "he that spareth the rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes." Love will thus prompt the parent to chasten his son while there is hope. Eli was an example of extreme parental indulgence. ”

“ It was nothing but jealousy which had prompted such a mad, cruel act, and jealousy of the most unreasonable—he might almost say unpardonable—kind: a father to be jealous of his wife's love for his own child! ”

“ And, among parents, comparatively few are sufficiently alert to the danger signals giving warning that such handicaps of perhaps catastrophic significance are being needlessly imposed on their children. Eccentricities of behaviour in children—such as jealousy and sulkiness—are too often ignored as being of no particular account, or are sadly misinterpreted by parents, with perhaps dire consequences to the children's whole careers. ”

“ But it by no means stands alone, and while the hand of reason usually restrains even jealous children, in no individual case is it possible to say with assurance that tragedy will not result if jealousy gets firm lodgment in the child's mind. If for this reason only, parents should regard with concern any repeated manifestations of jealousy, in no matter how mild and seemingly harmless a form. As a matter of fact, however, many parents are not in the least disturbed when their children give evidence of being jealous. ”

“ IN the preceding chapter reference was made to jealousy as a cause of sulkiness in children. Jealousy is itself a woeful handicap of childhood, and may be followed by disastrous consequences of many kinds. It has even been known to prompt children to acts as tragic as any committed by jealousy-driven adults. To cite a single instance:
In a small country town there lived a family of three persons—father, mother, and young son. Comfortably circumstanced, the parents testified their affection for their only child by loving care and gifts innumerable. ”

“ Just the same, jealousy is never a smiling matter and is always something which parents should try to root out without delay. The jealous child, if uncorrected, is all too likely to grow into a jealous adult, with tendencies which bring misery to himself, and which, if it becomes a question of sex-jealousy, may bring death to others. The parent who fails to attack jealousy when it first shows itself need not be surprised at any distortion of character or vagary of conduct that appears in later life. ”

“ This does not serve as a corrective and preventive of jealousy; rather, it simply panders to it, and is, at bottom, a confession of helplessness on the parents' part.
The real need is to give your children a home environment of such a character that the instinct of human sympathy will be highly developed in them. Jealousy has its roots in selfishness, in an over-development of what may be called the ego-centric instinct. The jealous child is pre-eminently a child unduly occupied with thoughts of self. ”

“ Wherefore he adds, “A brother is not under bondage, nor yet a sister, in such cases.” If day by day he buffet thee and keep up combats on this account, it is better to separate. For this is what he glances at, saying, “But God hath called us in peace.” For it is the other party who furnished the ground of separation, even as he did who committed uncleanness.
Ver. 16. “For how knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thine husband?” This again refers to that expression, “let her not leave him.” That is, “if he makes no disturbance, remain,” saith he, “for there is even profit in this ”

“ Jealousy is clearly a rationalization of hatred, it harks back to the primary egoistic attitude of the aboriginal man. The phyletic raw sexuality and criminality corresponds to man’s primary ontogenetic attitude towards his environment.
Other jealous persons see their criminal tendencies reflected in the surroundings. A jealous person has the hallucination that the supposed lover of his wife intends to knife him. In this manner the killing of the lover looms up as a logical necessity. ”

“ Jealousy is the projection of one’s own insufficiencies to the surroundings. [14] It is an atavistic awakening of the brutal sense of self such as was common to the primordial man protecting his possessions. ”

“ All children are jealous. Jealousy leads us back to the sources of man’s instinctive life.
It is not my intention to take up the whole subject of jealousy. But morbid jealousy shows certain definite, almost regular, relations to homosexuality which we must consider. We have seen that homosexuality may be hidden from consciousness. That is also true of jealousy. I have seen many neurotics who have suffered tremendously on account of their jealousy, without being aware of it. In the masking of neurosis jealousy assumes most remarkable forms. ”

“ The delusion of jealousy is rooted in sadism, the overstressed images accompanying the morbid feeling of jealousy are generated by the sadistic tendency. Sadism is the fertile soil giving rise to the delusions of persecution of the jealous alcoholics, and intimately linked with sadism stands masochism, upon which the feeling of jealousy feeds and grows. ”