NYU Post-Doc Eight Session Mini Course
Annihilation Anxieties: Treating Forms of Catastrophic Anxiety in Analytic Work
Marvin Hurvich, Instructor
Clinical Treatment of Specific Disorders: Selected Topics (PDPSA.4582)
Annihilation Anxieties are found most clearly in panic attacks, nightmares, psychic
trauma, fulminating psychoses, suicidal crises and temper tantrums. These catastrophic
anxieties constitute the vocabulary of panic, psychic trauma and the other conditions just
enumerated. The basic danger involves a threat to psychic survival, to the sense of self and the
ability to function. Such apprehensions may be felt as a present menace or as an anticipation of
an imminent catastrophe. The experience entails fantasies and/or feelings of helplessness in the
face of inner and/or outer dangers against which the person feels he can take no protective
action. Such anxieties are found across the psychopathological spectrum, and are especially
consequential in all psychopathology beyond the neurotic range. Both descriptive features and
therapeutic implications will be illustrated and explored. Case material will be provided by the
instructor and invited from the class participants.
A major goal of this course is to sensitize the class participants to these frequently found
primitive anxieties and their handling psychoanalytically. There will be ample opportunities for
questions and discussion.
New developments regarding Annihilation Anxieties included in this course are:
1. A detailed clarification of how Annihilation Anxieties can be seen to constitute a fifth
Psychic Danger, and how the inclusion of Annihilation Anxieties in the Danger Series
increases the clinical usefulness of the psychoanalytic theory of anxiety;
2. How a specification of the psychostructural component of Annihilation Anxieties
compliments the fantasy content aspect that is usually found in the literature;
3. A further delineation and refinement of levels of AA described earlier (Hurvich, 1991);
4. The relationship between Annihilation Anxieties and what I call the Overwhelmed/
Disorganized Conditions referred to above;
5. A survey of 30 years of empirical research measuring AA.
Week 1: Annihilation Anxieties as mental apprehensions/fantasies
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I will delineate seven interrelated Dimensions of Annihilation Anxieties and subdimensions (in parentheses). A key Dimension is of being Overwhelmed (smothered,
flooded, overstimulated, loss of control, inability to function). A second Dimension is of
being Merged (devoured, absorbed, fused, incorporated). A third is a fear or experience
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of being Fragmented (falling apart, shattered, disintegrated, going insane, melting). A
fourth, feeling Invaded (intruded on, penetrated, persecuted/tortured). A fifth, of being
abandoned (cast out, excluded, rejected, falling). A sixth is feeling Trapped (cornered,
ensnared, fenced in, confined, blocked). And the seventh, feeling Destroyed (killed,
immobilized, poisoned, demoralized, crushed).
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Annihilation Anxieties Modified by Psychostructural Considerations. Major structural
factors are the extent to which the apprehensions delineated above are Desymbolized or
Symbolized, Uncontrolled or Controlled, experienced as Intolerable or Tolerable,
Disorganized or Organized, Somatized vs. Desomatized, reflect Primary Process or
Secondary Process characteristics. And how much they demonstrate Reflective
Awareness, Affect Tolerance, Anger, Regression, Secondary Anxiety, Trust, and/or
Assimilability of the Experience. And, are there indications of Arousal of Previous
Disturbing Memories and Fantasies. And, apprehensions over Loss of Self and Inability
to Function.
Readings (No readings are required. The items are suggested)
Gediman, H. K. (1983). Annihilation Anxiety: The Experience of Deficit in Neurotic
Compromise Formation. IJP, 64: 59-70.
Hurvich, M. (2003). The Place of Annihilation Anxieties in Psychoanalytic Theory. JAPA, 51:
579-616.
Hurvich, M. (2011). New Developments in the Clinical Application of the Annihilation Anxiety
Concept. In A. Druck, C. Ellman, N. Freedman, & A. Thaler (Eds.), A New Freudian
Synthesis: Clinical Process in the Next Generation. London: Karnac.
Week 2: Instructor Clinical Case Illustrations

Material from a range of patients in psychodynamic psychotherapy/ psychoanalysis will
be presented to illuminate ways in which annihilation anxieties occur, clinically and how
they may influence the clinical process.
Week 3: Annihilation Anxieties as formulated by key psychoanalytic theorists

Here, there is a comparison and contrast of Freud’s Traumatic Anxiety, Klein’s
Persecutory Anxiety, Winnicott’s Primitive Agonies, Bion’s Nameless Dread and the
views of other psychoanalysts who have described related apprehensions. The
contributions of each of these theorists to the instructor’s formulation of Annihilation
Anxieties will be highlighted.
Readings (No readings are required. The items are suggested)
Freud, S. (1933). “Anxiety [and the instinctual life]. New Introductory Lecture 32, SE 22.
Bass, A. (1992). Psychotic Anxieties and Containment: A Personal Account of an Analysis with
Winnicott by Margaret Little. Psychoanal. Dial., 2:117-131.
Bion, W. R. (1962). A Theory of Thinking. IJP, 43: 306-310.
Freud, S. (1933) Anxiety, in New Introductory Lectures. S.E., 22: 5-182.
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Klein, M. (1935). A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States (Chapter 17).
In Love, Guilt and Reparation & Other Works. London: Delacourt Press.
Winnicott, D. W. (1965). Ego Integration in Child Development. In The Maturational Process
and the Facilitating Environment (Chapter 4). NY: IUP.
Winnicott, D. W. (1974). Fear of Breakdown. IRP, 1: 103-107.
Weeks 4 & 5: Levels of AA: Central Issues related to Psychic Trauma, Panic and
Nightmares are here considered

The features that distinguish levels of AA are the issues of subjective intolerability,
obligatory efforts to escape those unbearable feelings, regression/disorganization in key
ego functions, sense of self and levels of object relating. Components of reality testing
such as reflective function and blurring of the distinction between past and present are
found to varying degrees, as well as relative failures of integrative functioning.
Readings (No readings are required. The items are suggested)
Arvanitakis, K. et al. (1993). Early Sexual Abuse and Nightmares in the Analysis of Adults.
Psychoanal. Q., 62: 572-587.
Blum, H. P. (1994). The Conceptual Development of Regression. PSC, 49: 60-79.
De Masi, F.D. (2004). The psychodynamic of panic attacks. IJP, 85: 311-336.
Hurvich, M. (2004). Psychic Trauma and Fears of Annihilation. In D. Knafo, (Ed.), Living with
Terror, Working with Trauma: A Clinician’s Handbook. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
Krystal, H. (1978). Trauma and Affects. PSC, 33: 81-116.
Mack, J. (1965) Nightmares, Conflict, and Ego Development in Childhood. IJP 46: 403-428.
Week 6: Major Defensive Efforts against Annihilation Anxieties
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Major Defensive Efforts
Regression of functioning
Dissociation/splitting
Encapsulation (Hopper)
Spatial Defenses
Primitive Defenses More generally
Readings (No readings are required. The items are suggested)
Birksted-Breen, D. (1996). Phallus, Penis and Mental Space. IJP, 77: 649-657.
Freedman, Hurvich, et al., (2011). Another Kind of Evidence. London: Karnac.
Hopper, E. (1991). Encapsulation as a Defence Against the Fear of Annihilation. IJP, 72: 607624.
Hurvich, M. (1991) Annihilation Anxiety : an Introduction. In H. Siegel, C. Barbanel, I. Hirsch,
J. Lasky, H. L. Silverman, & S. Warshaw (Eds.), Psychoanalytic Reflections on Current
Issues (pp. 135-154). New York: New York University Press.
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Week 7: Annihilation Anxieties in Psychopathology

I will review the clinical manifestations of annihilation anxieties in Psychotic
conditions, Borderline levels of functioning, Eating Disorders, Perversions, and in the
various Overwhelmed/Disorganized Syndromes (Panic, Nightmares, Psychic Trauma,
Temper Tantrums)
Readings: (No readings are required. The items are suggested)
Frosch, J. (1967). Delusional Fixity, Sense of Conviction, and the Psychotic Conflict. IJP, 48:
475-495.
Farber, S.K., Jackson, C.C., Tabin, J.K. & Bachar, E. (2007). Death and Annihilation Anxieties
in Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia, and Self-Mutilation. Psychoanal. Psychol., 24: 289-305.
Williams, P. (224). Incorporation of an Invasive Object. IJP, 85: 1333-1348.
Weeks 7 & 8: Matriculants Case Presentations (to be scheduled in advance)
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