Assessment of Annihilation Anxiety from Projective Tests

Abstract

This report details procedures to measure annihilation anxiety, a concept derived from Freud's 1926 formulation of traumatic anxiety. A 25-item pencil-and-paper inventory administered to patient and to nonpatient samples is described, along with a brief summary of earlier findings. The delineation of nine interrelated experiential components of annihilation anxiety provides the background for the construction of Rorschach and TAT measures of the concept. Findings comparing the pencil-and-paper inventory and the projective test measures are presented as well as examples of responses judged to reflect annihilation anxiety from Rorschach and TAT protocols.

Rorschach assessment of annihilation anxiety and ego functioning.

“…The Rorschach Content Scale (RCS) for annihilation anxiety. As noted above, the RCS for annihilation anxiety (Hurvich et al, 1993) operationalizes salient markers for annihilation anxiety found in the literature and clinical reports. The markers are fear of being overwhelmed, fear of merger, fear of disintegration, fear of impingement, fear of loss of needed support, inability to cope, fear of loss of self cohesion, concern over survival, and catastrophic mentality.…”

“…Recently, Hurvich (Hurvich, Benveniste, Howard, & Coonerty, 1993) culled from the literature and from clinical and research reports what appear to be the most salient experiential correlates of annihilation anxiety.…”

“…The present comparison between the HEI-R and the RCS sought to replicate pilot study results (Hurvich et al, 1993) using the HEI. In that work, the correlation coefficient between the HEI and the RCS was .56 for the 20 participants of the study (p < .02).…”

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Howard, & Coonerty, 1993) for annihilation anxiety. Annihilation anxiety is denned here as the fear of one's impending psychic or physical destruction.

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A Conceptual Model and Measurement of Identity-Based, Existential Annihilation Anxieties (EAA)

“…Hurvich Experience Inventory (HEI), and its different versions (Allen, Hurvich, & Mcguire, 2017) is a self-report protocol that associate with projective measures of annihilation anxiety (Hurvich, Benveniste, Howard, & Coonerty, 1993), try to measure the psychoanalytic concept of personal identity-related annihilation anxiety. They are many measures of existential anxiety (EA) with most of them is focused on fear of death (e.g.…”