Assessment of annihilation anxiety from projective tests

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.