When Kindness Feels Contaminated: Envy, Projective Identification, and the Adolescent Who Can’t Let the Good In

Introduction: A Different Kind of Fear

In the treatment of obsessive–compulsive presentations, there is a growing awareness that not all rituals are about fear — at least not in the way we’ve been taught to think about it. Some rituals are not attempts to ward off danger, but attempts to spoil something intolerably good.

This post explores the obsessive system not as a structure of safety-seeking, but as a defence against unbearable goodness — particularly goodness offered in relational form.

Through the lens of envy, projective identification, and symbolic breakdown, I want to examine the adolescent who cannot let in what they most desire, and whose rituals emerge not from terror — but from mourning.

OCD as an Envious Structure

In some young people, particularly those with strong narcissistic or brittle psychic organisation, obsessive symptoms are structured not only by anxiety or intolerance of uncertainty — but by an organising envy.

This envy is not the dramatic kind. It doesn’t scream or destroy objects.

It operates quietly — in the avoidance of praise, the rejection of warmth, the psychic “wiping clean” of anything meaningful the therapist offers.

We see it clinically when:

• The young person engages well, then suddenly withdraws after a moment of connection.

• A compliment is followed by a ritual.

• A genuine moment of contact is immediately “contaminated” by self-disgust or sabotaged by a dismissive remark.

This is envy in its primitive, unprocessed form — not jealous of what someone else has, but unable to tolerate the presence of the good object unless it is spoiled.

Envy and Symbol Formation: When the Good Becomes Persecutory

Drawing on Melanie Klein and Hanna Segal, we know that the capacity to symbolise depends on the ability to hold the good object inside. To imagine it, to represent it, to mourn it when it is lost.

In obsessional adolescents, we often see a collapse of this symbolic capacity.

Instead of symbol, we see ritual.

Instead of representation, we see repetition.

The ritual acts as a placeholder for meaning that has become too painful to represent symbolically.

If envy dominates, the very act of forming a symbol becomes suspect.

The good is no longer metabolised — it becomes persecutory.

A kind word is no longer soothing — it’s sticky. Dangerous. Something that must be cleansed.

Clinical Example: “Don’t Say That, It’s Weird”

A 15-year-old in treatment for contamination fears refuses to let her therapist say anything kind.

The moment the therapist comments on her bravery, she frowns and says:

“Ugh. Don’t say that. That’s weird.”

She looks away. The next 10 minutes of the session are flat. She leaves abruptly.

Later that evening, she performs a three-hour ritual before bed, focusing on “cleansing” herself of something “awkward” that happened earlier.

The “awkwardness” was the compliment.

The ritual is not managing fear — it is destroying goodness that cannot be internalised without envy.

Projective Identification and the Therapist as Contaminant

In this dynamic, the therapist is not simply the carrier of understanding — they become the target of expelled parts of the adolescent’s internal world.

We are made to feel:

• Too much

• Intrusive

• Emotionally clumsy

• Contaminated ourselves

This is classic projective identification.

We are forced to hold what they cannot: dependency, hope, vulnerability, rage.

And this is precisely the moment where less trained clinicians may begin to retreat.

“She’s not ready.”

“She’s so sensitive.”

“Maybe she needs to be in a more structured service.”

But in truth, this is where the work begins. When the good is not just refused, but attacked — not because it’s bad, but because it matters too much.

Institutional Collusion and the Attack on Depth

When envy is active in the transference, the staff system often feels it too.

The young person may become the centre of clinical disagreement.

They provoke:

• Rescue fantasies

• Avoidance of deeper work

• Over-reliance on CBT techniques to “stay on task”

• Irritation dressed as care: “I just want her to get better.”

These reactions are often unconscious enactments of the adolescent’s own fractured internal world.

If the team cannot tolerate the good object being attacked and preserved simultaneously, the work fragments.

Therapist Survival: How We Stay in the Room

When confronted with these dynamics, the therapist must do two things simultaneously:

1. Maintain emotional curiosity about the attack

2. Hold onto their symbolic function — the capacity to think, name, and represent

Without this, we risk becoming either useful and hollow (all structure, no meaning), or overwhelmed and silent (all countertransference, no containment).

Verbatim interventions that have helped:

“It felt like when I said something kind, something in the room changed. I wonder if it felt like I was giving you something you didn’t ask for — or didn’t want to need.”

“Sometimes when someone sees something good in us, it feels like they’ve taken something. Like we didn’t get to hold it ourselves.”

These are not interpretations. They are offerings — attempts to name the unnameable.

Rituals as Mourning That Dare Not Speak

Many rituals are, at their core, expressions of grief.

Not grief for a person, but for:

• A failed internal link

• A contaminated experience of love

• A good object that once felt possible but has since become persecutory

In these moments, the therapist is not working against fear.

They are working beside mourning that cannot yet be felt.

The ritual is not there to manage risk.

It is there to bury something ungrieved — to hold a funeral for the self that never fully received the good.

Conclusion: Holding the Good in Mind

If we are to treat obsessional adolescents with depth, we must move beyond the assumption that rituals always protect against fear.

Some protect against hope.

Some defend against love.

Some are aimed directly at spoiling the internal world before someone else can abandon it.

To work psychodynamically with OCD is not to oppose ERP. It is to understand what the ERP is exposing — and whether the young person can survive being exposed to something good.