The author reflects on the relations between envy and resistance. Drawing on elements of the clinical history of Bernard Bensidoun’s patient, the author looks at penis envy in the concept of the negative therapeutic reaction. She postulates that, in certain configurations, when the processes of introjection and identification have been impeded by the mastery behaviours of envious mothers, resistance in the analysis is potentially a vital resistance that enables the patient to feel he or she exists. It could be seen as a transition via an acted transference with the aim of freeing oneself from alienating identifications. This would make it possible to move from a dangerous otherness to a self-revealing otherness in which appropriative envy in the primary register, transformed into a desire to know, participates in the symbolization of difference. The analyst’s capacity to let himself be “used”, in Winnicott’s sense, by bringing into play his feminine and masculine aspects, is an essential factor in favouring these processes of transformation.