Envy is different from the other six deadly sins. It is, unless I am much mistaken,
the only one that does not have an enjoyable side. It is all resentment, ill will, and sour
grapes. Sometimes the word is used in a way that implies admiration as in "the NHS is the
envy of the world"-a common phrase when I was a medical student but one that no longer
rings true. In any case, this would be more accurately described as coveting. Envy, did you
say? Keep going past coveting and stop just before you reach begrudging.
But, like the
other six, envy is a state of mind: it does not require you to do anything. This strikes me
as extraordinary, that you could commit a deadly sin-indeed all seven-without moving a
muscle. After all, if you had to come up with seven modern sins the chances are that you
would choose actions rather than thoughts. Drunkenness might qualify; fancying a few pints
would seem a bit weak. But envy is an unpleasant thought wrapped in an unwanted emotion, and
that explains the place that it occupies in medicine.
It was Sigmund Freud's view that
envy was the state of mind that explained women. But not just any envy. Everything from
women's neuroses to their ambitions, including the desire for psychoanalysis itself, was put
down to penis envy. It all begins, said Freud, with the infant girl's realisation that she
is different from her father in what advertisements for depilatory creams call the bikini
area. Not only does she never quite forgive her mother, who on fairly circumstantial
evidence is held responsible for her deficiency (Freud's word, not mine), but she spends the
rest of her life trying to get back what she has lost. Not consciously, however- we are
dealing here with the father of psychoanalysis, not John Wayne Bobbitt.
It is easy to mock Freud, and envious people have not been slow to do so. One of the
towering figures of 20th century thought he may have been, but women, it is said, were his
blind spot. But looked at more simply, stripped of the theory that nowadays is hard to
swallow, Freud's view of women is uncontroversial, unoriginal even. Take out the penis and
what you are left with is sociological envy, women's discomfort at the status, influence,
and job success that men can attain and yet not deserve. The fact that it comes with more
alcoholism, heart disease, and suicide has never made the penis less enviable.
It is not
envy that modern psychiatrists worry about but its mirror image, jealousy. I had been in the
specialty no more than a few days when I met my first case of delusional jealousy-Othello
syndrome. He was a musician who had treated his premature ejaculation with amphetamines to
which he had ready access. The drugs had turned him paranoid and he had accused his
girlfriend of infidelity, confronting her with half baked evidence. When she denied it he
beat her badly-it may be Othello's syndrome but it was Desdemona's neck.
Jealousy of
this intensity is a male preserve. In some cases, you find men who fear their own
inadequacies, who need to possess women in compensation, and who cannot accept that women
have other ideas-morbid jealousy tells us more about attitudes between the sexes than penis
envy ever could. And, unlike envy, jealousy is more than thought: it leads to action. Men
with Othello syndrome sometimes kill their women and occasionally kill themselves. Jealousy
may not have made it into the top seven sins but no one can say that it is not deadly.
Whithington Hospital,
Manchester M20 8LR
Louis Appleby,
Professor of psychiatry
