Considerations on some aspects of personality: envy, inferiority, and guilt

Abstract

For Klein, feelings of guilt for hating the evil object of the mother's breast are connected to defense mechanisms of self-deprecation and feelings of inferiority, and neurosis is a regression to these primitive feelings and the defense mechanisms against them. For Adler, neurosis is the persistence of a childish lifestyle. For both, the ability to love and identify with others is important for the transition from couple life (mother-child) to group life. This does not happen in modern society because it is dominated by a couple culture dominated by these primitive childhood feelings