Understanding Annihilation Anxiety in Psychoanalysis

Annihilation anxieties reflect fears of disintegration of the self and have roots in early traumatic experiences, ego weaknesses, and issues with self-cohesion. They are triggered by threats or perceived threats to survival and generally originate in early stages of development but can persist throughout adult life (Hurvich, 2003). Annihilation anxiety is commonly associated with fears of being overwhelmed, merged, penetrated, and fragmenting to bits (Klein, 1958) and can occur in fantasied, presymbolic, and preverbal forms.

Annihilation anxiety has been well studied in the psychoanalytic literature but in recent decades it has been further elaborated upon. In expanding upon Freud's (1920) writings on the death instinct and the psyche's ability to cope with inevitability of death, Klein viewed annihilation anxiety as a result of the death instinct but Klein focused more on the fear of death rather than the wish or drive towards death. Both Klein and Freud viewed the terror of annihilation, as well as destructive tendencies in the psyche, as innate biological components, however other theorists such as Williams (1997) and Bion (1962) have conceptualized it as a developmental result of the parents' caretaking and interaction with the child.

Winnicott (1960) viewed annihilation anxiety as a disruption in an infant's 'continuity of being' resulting from maternal impingements that constitute a psychic threat to the infant. Bion (1962) writes that a critical role of the mother's is her ability to receive and contain her baby's fear of dying. A mother who is unable to receive her infant's anxieties and return them back to the infant in a mollified, calmed form is felt by the infant as an attack on the mother-infant bond, and therefore in the infant's mind poses an annihilatory threat to the infant's very existence. Hurivch (1989) posited that the fear of being overwhelmed or annihilated constitutes a basic danger and should be included in Freud's series of infantile danger situations which include fear of loss of the object, loss of love, castration, and superego censure.

Plath's Struggles With Annihilatory Fears and Wishes

Plath was an extremely ambitious young woman. She had won multiple scholarships and writing contests and had been accepted by Harper's Magazine at age 21, by The Atlantic at 23, and by The New Yorker at 25. She would chastise herself over her failures but would then rally to send off more submissions to other magazines and contests, and “success was her true worship” (Davison, 1982). The extreme nature of Plath's ambition could indicate that she had a harsh superego. It is possible that Plath's annihilatory anxieties were in part a result of what Klein (1958) conceptualized as a psychotic and cruel superego that appears as a “terrifying internal object that can neither be assimilated nor transformed.”

Plath's personal journals show evidence of a harsh superego in the way she treated those close to her: “Plath's friends, even those closest to her, hardly ever receive a kind word in the journals, except when being useful or admiring” (Davison, 1982). Klein viewed a cruel superego as directly related to “destructive impulses and internal persecutors” (Klein, 1958).

Migliozzi's (2016) writes that destructive and anti-relational psychic structures expand by “seducing the healthy parts of the mind and colonizing them.” Plath's increasing desperation under the demands of parenthood, shown in her journal entries, may be evidence that in Migliozzi's conceptualization, Plath was becoming progressively isolated from “from nurturing and growth derived from contact with external objects” (p. 1023) and this could fuel her annihilatory anxieties. Although Migliozzi focuses on “evil” and most would not consider Plath to be evil, her journals show that she tended as Migliozzi writes, to destroy joy and meaningfulness in her life.

The Addiction to Near Death and Creative Transformation

Plath made her first documented suicide attempt in August, 1953 when she was 20 years old. This failed attempt and her eventual death reflect a lifelong drive toward annihilation that corresponds to Joseph's (1982) view that some people “feel in thrall to a part of the self that dominates and imprisons them.” Plath's writings show a pervasive obsession with death as evidenced by themes in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar (1963).

Annihilation was not only a fear to Plath, but also a delight, as shown in the revelry of doom and death evidenced in her poems. Joseph (1982) writes extensively about her patients with annihilatory addictions that form a powerful masochistic force within them. Unlike Joseph's patients, where circular mental activities often became the antithesis of thought, Plath was able to harness these forces into stellar written examples of human thought. Plath uses her intellectual abilities to transform her masochistic excitement into a range of vivid annihilistic fantasies, as evident in “Fever 103”:

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin,
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright

Evidence of a harsh superego appears in her words, “the sin, the sin” as well as annihilatory overtones in “the tinder cries,” evoking visions of burning and ashes. Death is evident in “The indelible smell…of a snuffed candle.” Plath's obsession with annihilation is also evident in her phrase “From me like Isadora's scarves,” an identificatory reference to the dancer Isadora Duncan, who was killed when her long scarf caught in the wheel of her car while driving.

Plath's satisfaction from her own annihilatory fantasies is often accompanied in her poems by sexual metaphors, which relates to Freud's (1924) assertion that “even the subject's destruction of himself cannot take place without libidinal satisfaction.” This is remarkable when one looks at two stanzas from Plath's “Fever 103.” The first expresses a vision of death while the subsequent stanza expresses libidinal satisfaction:

Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.
....
Does not my heat astound you! And my light!
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush

Maternal Impingements and the Internalization of Anxiety

Plath's violent imagery may indicate that during infancy she suffered from, according to Winnicott's theories, maternal impingements that caused a disruption in her “continuity of being.” Williams (1997) proposed that a disruption in the container/contained relationship described by Bion (1962) could lead the child to internalize the parent's disruptive projections into what Williams termed an “omega” function, which serves as a disorganizing, frightening object in the child's internal world.

Plath's hatred for her mother is evidenced by journal entries such as: "I hate her hate her hate her ... I hate her because he [her father] wasn't loved by her. He was an ogre. But I miss him. It was her fault. Damn her eyes." (1960). Plath's hatred may well have been a manifestation of conscious and unconscious resentment of having to serve as a receptacle for her mother's anxious projections.

Conclusion: The Necessity of Analysis

Plath's poetry was exceptional in its vivid, gothic imagery. Her poem Ariel shows her fantasy of annihilatory delight: "And I / Am the arrow, / The dew that flies / Suicidal, at one with the drive / Into the red / Eye, the cauldron of morning." Here, Plath is explicit about her ecstatic drive towards deathly transformation.

It seems a tragedy that Plath did not enter psychoanalysis. Without the aid of psychoanalysis, Plath was unable to manage the deep anxieties and annihilatory tendencies that drove and directed her short life. Writing about her has helped me relate concepts discussed in class and the readings, and helps me gain perspective into my own psyche.

Appendix: Additional Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Plath

As a relative beginner in the psychoanalytic field, it is useful to apply concepts from our readings. Plath's early development may have been characterized by deficiencies in her relationships with her parents. Perhaps Plath's mother exhibited a lack of maternal sensitivity that led to a form of insecure attachment, as described by Bowlby. Winnicott may have also viewed Plath's mother as having a defective mirroring function, unable to withstand the infant's attempts to psychically destroy her. This would help explain Plath's love/hate relationship with her mother and constant need for contact with her.

The imagery of Plath's poems may reflect an interruption in the function of psychic equivalence, where “for the young child mental events are equivalent in terms of power, causality, and implications to events in the physical world” (Wallin, 2007). Even though Plath stayed in close contact with her mother, she may not have had the ego strength to be psychically separate. Plath's rage may reflect her inability to relinquish her psychic dependency. From a Kleinian viewpoint, Plath's troubles may have arisen from her mother not being able to sufficiently absorb and retransmit back metabolized forms of the infant's distressing experiences.