“A jealous man is miserable, he becomes a restless child again to share the breast”

We’re all a little jealous. But when the symptom of jealousy becomes excessive, even pathological, it can ruin romantic, friendship, family relationships, and even personalities. Then it’s about overcoming jealousy by looking at things plainly; And this is without regret, because, after all, jealousy is not used for much, and jealous people are not jealous. Clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Joseph Agostini, author of a new book on the benefits of love songs (1), is doing a show on the subject. He explains the sources to us.

In the video, Jealous By David and Stefan Foenkinos with Karin Viard, trailer

Primary reflex

“Jealousy reactivates the primal human mechanism. When a baby is very small, it wants to fight to be fully supported by its mother’s breast. His environment is hostile to him. If we go further, his reflection in the mirror may even be unbearable for him, if his mother does not come to name him, calm him down, soften the outline of existence. That being said, without the object of this first love, he would be naked, alone, doomed to the wolves of the forest. This extreme dependency leads to clinging, mistrust of others, source of jealousy at all times of life.

But then, jealousy and generosity are irreconcilable. “Generosity comes only when a child is able to give to another, that is, to have a breastplate thick enough to differentiate inside and out. What he keeps inside himself, no one can steal from him. The exterior is then nothing more than a vibrating surface that comes and goes in an impermanence that must be embraced. The other does not belong to him. We are generous when we are not afraid to lose, when we have passed the first stage of hypervigilance. Then the mechanisms of gift, gratitude, loyalty can dominate. But if the jealous person remains in the stage of competition, without reaching the stage of gratitude, exchange, reciprocity, he leaves reality to fall into delusion and may eventually petrify into paranoia, leaving no room for surprise to his greatest enemy.

When jealousy is still prevalent in adulthood, it is often combined with excessive pride

Joseph Agostini

Too big an ego

Since you have to live well with and deal with jealous people, you might as well know who you’re dealing with. “When jealousy still dominates in adulthood, it is often combined with excessive pride, as if the person in question claims the right to dominate the other with complete impunity. The statement “When I really love, I’m jealous” seems to legitimize the way we are in a jealous world.

However, in terms of mental progress, it is the opposite: “The more we love the other person, the more we talk about going beyond it, for the sake of love, mastery, alienation, – our primitive mechanisms of power.” This is the tipping point. “A jealous person is pathetic because he turns the situation around, justifies his tendencies by considering it normal to watch over his loved one. She becomes a child again, tormented by the idea of ​​sharing a breast. “His Majesty to the little onesaid English pediatrician Winnicott. Only here. he is above all an old child, without a crown, who does not adapt well to the rules of life; growing up alone, living alone, meeting beings different from us, on paths that cross our paths but don’t. join it never completely.”

Deadly world

It’s time to choose your path. “The mechanisms of generosity, letting go, tolerance, and resilience have a bright future ahead of them because they embrace life’s movement, transience, decay, impermanence… Like a three-minute love song. We catch it in flight, taste it like candy. It does well and can even be comforting. On the contrary, “the mechanism of jealousy leads to a frozen world where we want everything to remain the same, for the other to have eyes only for us, for things to be governed by our sole power. It is a puppet world, completely imaginary, which ends badly because it is completely out of step with the real human condition. Jealousy is failure. They say.

(1) Love songs heal the heart of the worldBy Daniela Lumbroso and Joseph Agostini, Éditions Robert Laffont, 224 p., €19.

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