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The manifestations of envy are expressed through predatory and destructive human behaviours, including murder, in the manner of Shakespearian heroes, and feature throughout the history of humanity. Melanie Klein locates the origin of envy at the very beginning of ego-construction and sees it as the primary maternal object’s destructive impulse for appropriation and aggression. Under the aegis of the life drive, envy serves as a defence against the death drive and is a process of psychic survival. When it is not phantasized, it finds expression in character and through negative therapeutic reactions. According to P.-C. Racamier, envy infiltrates the personality of the narcissistic pervert and his relationship to the object, which is a defence against envy. The instrumentalized and non-eroticized object, protects against envy through inversion into its contrary. The narcissistic pervert denies any dependence on the object even though it is vital to him, as evidenced by a clinical example where the loss of the object threatens him with psychic collapse.