I have been thinking deeply about the issue of jealousy in slaves lately. By pure chance, none of my previous slaves have had a jealous bone in their body. Non-jealousy wasn't a trait I was looking for, it was just the luck of the draw. But my current slave does have a fairly jealous streak, which is something new for me to deal with.
From what I have read, the popular consensus seems to be that jealousy is caused by insecurity, and that if you eliminate insecurity you will eliminate jealousy. I do not believe this to be true either on a theoretical or practical level. In fact, based on what I've seen, it is jealousy that can create insecurity rather than the other way around.
I think when we deal with jealousy we are dealing with one of the "Primal Emotions": emotions which appear spontaneously when triggered, are instinctive in animals as well as humans, are neurologically hard-wired into the brain, and are highly resistant to change. Other primal emotions are Rage, Lust, Fear, Grief and possibly Love. Primal emotions aren't based on any other emotions and appear instantly when triggered, usually creating a powerful out-of-control feeling in the person feeling them.
Higher social mammals have been observed to express jealousy when a dominant animal gives affection to another member of the pack/family. The jealous rival will scowl, show distress and anxiety, make excited sounds, and try to push itself between the other two engaging in affection. Those of us who own dogs may be very familiar with this behaviour.
Being instinctive and primal, jealousy is an extremely difficult emotion to change because it is powerful and irrational. Extremely secure people can feel jealousy just as much as insecure people, although jealousy can be responsible for an irrational train of thought that leads the person to feel insecure as a result. Being told that if you feel jealous it means you are insecure is thus rubbing salt into the wound, adding unnecessary guilt and self-condemnation to the mix of already volatile emotions.
In some cultures jealousy is accepted and expected and no negative connotations accompany it; for example in European Latino cultures where jealousy is seen as a sign of passionate love. In Western cultures, however, it is highly frowned upon and is accompanied by significant feelings of guilt and wrongness. A quick look in a thesaurus produced the following synonyms for "jealous": begrudging, covetous, demanding, doubting, envious, grasping, intolerant, mistrustful, monopolizing, possessive, resentful, and suspicious. Hardly a complimentary list of traits!
How can a dominant deal with jealousy in his slave, then? I don't think there is any easy way, but I have tried a few methods and think I have found one which has been much more successful for me than others. A dom must understand that his slave is not in control of her jealousy and does not wish to be jealous. Scolding or punishing her for it increases guilt and self-condemnation while doing nothing to prevent the jealousy from happening. If anything, it will drive her jealousy underground where it will fester and express itself in various weird and inexplicable behaviours.
My most successful attempt at dealing with jealousy has been to acknowledge the fact that she is feeling jealous, that she doesn't want to be jealous and wishes she could stop it, and that her jealousy will not affect what I do with her or others or what I expect of her as a slave. Jealousy is such a powerful and dramatic emotion that the slave feels as if she ought to be violently slapped down for it or be angrily banished from her dom's sight; or, on the other hand, she may feel that because it feels so unpleasant to her that her dom ought to never do anything which may trigger it. This leads to interesting situations where doms are not "allowed" by their slave to talk to other women or look at them or have anything to do with them.
On a practical level, I have allowed and encouraged my slave to express her jealousy in private in acceptable ways. For example, I have allowed her to cuss out the rival woman in a whisper to me, and to pretend to "disinfect" me by spraying me with imaginary Lysol to get rid of other-woman cooties. This gives her a chance to express jealousy without stuffing it down inside herself to fester, and prevents it from being expressed in other weird ways that she cannot control. This also injects a little bit of humour into the situation which lightens it up a little. At the same time, I let her know that I am not offended by her being a jealous little bitch, and that she is required to serve me anyway no matter how she is feeling. This has had excellent results and, while not preventing jealousy from happening in the first place, has made the jealous episodes much shorter and much less spectacular, and with no emotional fallout. She feels reassured and contained by the fact that her jealousy is not powerful enough to sway me or anger me or change the way I feel about her or treat her.
I have no idea whether my method would work for anyone else, because I've never had the chance to try it on anyone else. But it makes sense to me that it ought to work on at least a lot of other slaves. I would be very interested to hear what everyone else thinks of the ideas here, and especially about peoples' practical experiences with jealousy and what worked and didn't work for them.