The unconscious need of a mother to use her child as a means to fill her own "narcissistic emptiness" creates in the child a sense of "irreplaceability." However, when the mother turns to the father or another child is born in the family, she starts to use the new child to deal with her "narcissistic trauma."

The older child perceives this change as a form of traumatic betrayal, accompanied by intense feelings of exclusion and anger towards the mother, as well as towards the father and the newborn infant. This emotion becomes the primary source of "sibling rivalry." As a result, the child develops the belief that if "I wasn't chosen, someone else must become irreplaceable to fill the mother's narcissistic emptiness."

Rafael López-Corvo referred to this belief as the "basic delusion" and claimed that this mechanism contributes to the development of strong envy and the need for revenge towards parents and siblings, which is always projected onto other people.

The child unconsciously believes that "vengeful hope" is the only way to alleviate psychological suffering. However, this task is greatly complicated by the ambivalence between "need" and "hate" that we always feel towards the lost object when it "returns." We passionately desire the object when we don't possess it, but we attack and reject it when we "get it back."

This sets in motion an endless dialectical repetition, which always leaves us empty-handed and in need of searching again and again. This is the vicious cycle that sustains the illusion of boundless " vengeful hope."

In his book "The Traumatic Loneliness of Children" Rafael López-Corvo (2020) provided the following example: "Manuel was a patient with a history of sexual addiction, a kind of compulsive 'Don Juan.' He grew up in a foster family, where he was taken shortly after birth.

His foster mother couldn't conceive for three years after getting married, but, as often happens, four years after adopting Manuel, she became pregnant with a boy, and two years later, with a girl. The contrast in how the mother treated him before and after the birth of his brother was so great that he often sadly referred to the inconsistency in timing as the 'prince and the pauper.'

He began to experience intense envy toward the other family members, which later got projected onto anyone he considered a 'harmonious couple,' including his own family.

It was evident that beneath his compulsive need to treat women as if they were his enemies or seduce them to dominate them and then abandon them, there was an unconscious desire to take revenge on his mother and siblings, a kind of 'vengeful hope.'

Instead of using sex as an expression of love and creative pleasure, he used it as a destructive tool for revenge and humiliation. Accepting this was difficult for him because the entire structure of this defense was based on the 'all or nothing' principle or the 'black-and-white' form of dialectics.

He felt happy and elated every time he had the opportunity to fulfill the hope for revenge he projected onto others, most often women. But at the same time, he felt depressed when he anticipated that such action would be impossible.

Furthermore, he believed that if he had to give up this successful strategy for his well-being, his whole life would become 'empty.' In reality, what he did to escape the pain was the main cause of his suffering!" (López-Corvo, 2020).

Thus, ‘vengeful hope’ is also based on the possibility of destroying any rival, such as a powerful father or a beloved brother or sister, who is presumed capable of fulfilling the ‘basic delusion’ of filling the mother's narcissistic emptiness.

If the idealized object that can make this basic fallacy possible is projected, the attack will be directed outward. If this object is introjected, the destruction will be directed inward, against the creative aspect of the ego, using a mechanism that López-Corvo ‘self-envy.’