Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95:613–627 doi: 10.1111/1745-8315.

12177

On ‘the fear of death’ as the primary anxiety: How and

why Klein differs from Freud

Rachel B. Blass
Heythrop College, 23 Kensington Square, London, W8 5HN,
UK – r.blass@ucl.ac.uk

(Accepted for publication 2 December 2013)

It is well known that Melanie Klein held the view that ‘fear of death’ is the
primary source of anxiety and that her position is explicitly opposed to that
of Sigmund Freud, who maintained that that fear cannot in any way or form
be a source of anxiety. In a previous article on Freud’s Inhibitions, Symptoms
and Anxiety (Blass, 2013), the author argued that, counter to what is com-
monly portrayed in the literature, Freud’s considerations for rejecting the fear
of death as a source of anxiety were based on relational and experiential fac-
tors that are usually associated with Kleinian psychoanalysis. In light of this
affinity of Freud with Klein a question arises as to the actual source of their
differences in this context. The present paper offers an answer to this ques-
tion. The author first presents some of her earlier findings on what led Freud
to reject the fear of death as a source of anxiety and then turns to investigate
Klein’s considerations for accepting it. This takes us beyond her explicit state-
ments on this matter and sheds new light on the relationship of her views
regarding death and anxiety and those of Freud. In turn this deepens the
understanding of the relationship of Freud and Klein’s conceptualizations of
the psyche and its internal object relations, pointing to both surprising com-
mon ground and foundational differences.

Keywords: Freud, Klein, anxiety, primary anxiety, death, fear of death, Inhibitions,
Symptoms and Anxiety, object relations, mind

Introduction
While the psychoanalytic literature has recognized that Melanie Klein was
greatly influenced by Freud’s thinking on anxiety and especially by the way
he developed his thinking in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (see Hin-
shelwood, 1989, p. 112), it has also stressed that in her writings on anxiety
(and specifically her discussion of Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety) Klein
diverges from Freud in an important way. The major difference that is
noted regards the role that death plays in the emergence of anxiety. Klein
sees the fear of death as the fundamental source of anxiety: “I put forward
the hypothesis that anxiety is aroused by the danger which threatens the
organism from the death instinct; and I suggested that this is the primary
cause of anxiety. . . anxiety has its origin in the fear of death” (ibid, p. 28).1
In contrast, for Freud this is impossible since the “unconscious seems to
1
It should be mentioned that in some other texts Klein notes that “other important sources of primary
anxiety are the trauma of birth (separation anxiety) and frustration of bodily needs” (Klein, 1946a,
pp. 4–5).

Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis

614 R. B. Blass

contain nothing that could give any content to our concept of the annihila-
tion of life” (Freud, 1926, p. 129). Although Klein (1948) considered her
hypothesis to be a derivative of Freud’s thinking on the death instinct, she
herself explicitly acknowledged that, in this regard, her views departed from
those held by Freud.
Following Klein’s (1948) own views of this departure, her differences
from Freud are often seen, by her supporters and critics alike, to be the
result of her more general emphasis on the death instinct and on aggression,
with authors divided on the value of this emphasis (Brenner, 1950; Comp-
ton, 1972; Glover, 1945; Hinshelwood, 1989; Money-Kyrle, 1955; Spillius
et al., 2011; Yorke, 1971; Zetzel, 1956). Supporters, again following Klein,
point to the clinical findings that shaped Klein’s position; but they also
make reference to broader theoretical considerations. In particular, they
point to Klein’s concern with the content of anxiety rather than with its eco-
nomic determinants, which are regarded as central to Freud’s account (Hin-
shelwood, 1989; Spillius et al., 2011). It is claimed that, although Klein
valued the views on the contents of anxiety that Freud began to develop in
Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, she eschewed his thinking on the ener-
getic conditions underlying anxiety. De Bianchedi et al. (1988, p. 360) con-
sider this to be a metapsychological difference between the natural science
perspective of Freud and the human science perspective of Klein.
In a previous article, On the complex, relational nature of Freud’s thinking
on primary anxiety in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety: Differences from
and ties to Klein (Blass, 2013), I have argued that these common attempts
to account for this divergence of Klein from Freud do not adequately por-
tray the nature of their differences and the rich and complex considerations
that underlie them. I stressed that, counter to what has been described in
the literature, Freud’s considerations for rejecting the fear of death as a
source of anxiety were based on relational and experiential factors that are
thought to be especially Kleinian in nature. In light of this affinity of Freud
with Klein a question arises as to the actual source of the differences
between them in this context. That is, given the similarities that I point to,
how could Klein depart from Freud in her understanding of the role of the
fear of death in anxiety?
In what follows I will offer an answer to this question. This involves two
steps: (a) I will briefly present some of my earlier findings on the inade-
quacy of common accounts of the differences between Freud and Klein on
anxiety and on what actually led Freud to reject the fear of death as a
source of anxiety; and then (b) I will investigate Klein’s considerations for
accepting it. This involves examining Klein’s well-known explicit statements
on this matter, but also seeing their limitations and going beyond them.
Ultimately, my answer to the question of what allows Klein to depart from
Freud regarding the fear of death centres on fine but significant differences
between the two analysts’ conceptions of internal object relations and of the
impact of phantasy on the mind. Bringing these differences to light allows
us to better understand the complex discourse that is found between Freud
and Klein—not only in regard to anxiety, but also more generally—and to
appreciate its significance.
Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95 Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis
 Klein vs. Freud on “fear of death” 615

Freud’s rejection of the fear of death as a source of anxiety:

The inadequacy of prevalent accounts
In my earlier paper on the differences between Freud and Klein regarding
fear of death as a source of anxiety I showed how like Freud, Klein discusses
economic factors in anxiety (see also Blass, 2012). For example, she writes of
the importance of considering the “quantity of anxiety from inner sources”,
a point that she notes: “Freud repeatedly referred to” (Klein, 1948, p. 40).
She also concurs with Freud’s conclusion that: “[I]n young children it is
unsatisfied libidinal excitation which turns into anxiety” (ibid., p. 26).
For his part, Freud does not deny that the death instinct makes impor-
tant contributions to anxiety. Indeed, it may be because of our destructive
tendencies that we anxiously fear retribution. What Freud denies is the
claim that the fear of death could be a source of anxiety. The fear of death
is not the same as the death instinct. The death instinct seeks death; the fear
of death hopes to avoid it. As Money-Kyrle notes: “They do not logically
exclude each other . . . [b]ut neither do they necessarily imply each other”2
(1955, p. 501).
Through closely tracing the development of Freud’s ideas in Inhibitions,
Symptoms and Anxiety (Freud, 1926), my study also demonstrated how
Freud’s views on anxiety—at least as they are put forth in that text—are
very much focused on psychic contents and their relational nature. These
contents include the following danger situations: psychical helplessness, loss
of the object, castration, and fear of the superego. He also speaks of the
trauma of birth, separation, and the loss of the object’s love. In this context,
even when he speaks of contents that seem to be less relational in nature, he
understands them in a very relational way. The fear of castration, for exam-
ple, is seen as a fear of loss and separation—not only of part of the body,
but also of what ties the male child to his mother. Separation from one’s
genitals is a danger fundamentally because: “That organ is a guarantee to
its owner that he can be once more united to his mother” (1926, p. 139).
Moreover, Freud attempts to understand these relational contents in what
may be considered a particularly Kleinian way. This, and not his economic
considerations, is precisely what leads him to a perspective different from
Klein’s on the involvement of the fear of death in anxiety. I illustrate: in
Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, he first raises the issue of the fear of
death immediately after drawing his conclusion that anxiety is a reaction to
a situation of danger. Freud writes:

If anxiety is a reaction of the ego to danger, we shall be tempted to regard the trau-
matic neuroses, which so often follow upon a narrow escape from death, as a direct
result of a fear of death (or fear for life) and to dismiss from our minds the ques-
tion of castration and the dependent relationships of the ego.
(ibid., p. 129)

2
It may be seen that the relationship between the fear of death and the death instinct is complex. While
here I argue that it is possible to posit the existence of the death instinct without positing the fear of
death as a basic anxiety, later I will show that how one conceives of the way the death instinct manifests
itself in internal object relations impacts the possibility of positing the fear of death as a basic anxiety.

Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95

616 R. B. Blass

He quickly rejects this temptation, explaining: “It is highly improbable

that a neurosis could come into being merely because of the objective pres-
ence of danger, without any participation of the deeper levels of the mental
apparatus” (ibid.). Although the fear of death obviously exists and has a
significant impact, according to Freud it simply does not exist on deeper,
unconscious levels. It therefore cannot account for neurotic experience.
It is here that Freud’s apparently Kleinian way of thinking comes into
play. Firstly, in line with Klein’s thinking, he is concerned with the deepest
levels of the mind. In order for a fear to constitute a danger state and be a
source of anxiety it must be fundamentally unconscious. But secondly, his
reasons for why there can be no unconscious fear of death are also Kleinian
in nature. As in Klein’s understanding of the origins of unconscious phan-
tasy, according to Freud an affective state can only be fundamentally
unconscious (and therefore have the power to pervert both thinking and the
perception of reality), if it was immediately experienced early in infancy; it
could not be something consciously learned about later in life. As Freud
explains, however, “nothing resembling death can ever have been experi-
enced” (ibid., p. 130). This is because we can never directly experience our
non-existence; that would require our being there to experience it—an evi-
dent contradiction. (Freud suggests that the closest that we could come to
such an experience is in the state of fainting.) Thus, the “unconscious seems
to contain nothing that could give any content to our concept of the annihi-
lation of life” (ibid., my italics).
Freud contrasts this with castration anxiety, which is known to us
through daily experiences “of the faeces being separated from the body or
on the basis of losing the mother’s breast at weaning” (Freud, 1926, pp.
129–30). Here we also see a Kleinian focus on the bodily origins of phan-
tasy. The deeper psychic meaning of the ostensible fear of death, Freud
argues, may therefore be understood in terms of an underlying fear of cas-
tration and the ego’s experience of “being abandoned by the protecting
super-ego” (ibid., p. 130). In other words, it is the early experience of the
danger of the loss of the object and its loving protection—a danger con-
ceivable through experience—that serves as the unconscious determinant of
the fear of death.
Later in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety Freud speaks of the infant’s
experience when faced with a real danger to his life (such as the danger con-
stituted by birth). He explains that what it then experiences is not its poten-
tial destruction (of which it cannot have knowledge), but rather “some vast
disturbance in the economy of its narcissistic libido” (ibid., p. 135). It expe-
riences a state of helplessness in the face of overwhelming stimulation. This
economic account of the fear of death corresponds to the account Freud
gives of early loss. It is the state of mind that will emerge if the object is
lost. Both refer to events that are immediately experienced early on and
provide the deep unconscious psychic grounds of the fear of death. In a
deep psychic sense, however, there is and could be, according to Freud, no
fear of death per se.
In sum, counter to what has been suggested in the literature my previous
study showed that it was not Freud’s focus on energetic considerations,
Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95 Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis
 Klein vs. Freud on “fear of death” 617

and his limited interests in contents of anxiety and the death instinct rela-
tive to those of Klein, that explain why he could not accept her view of the
fear of death as a source of anxiety. On the contrary, his considerations in
rejecting the view that she was to hold were Kleinian in nature—his
concerns with the deep unconscious and early experience, subjectively
experienced.

Why Klein differs from Freud on the nature of the primary

anxiety
Freud’s apparently ‘Kleinian argument’ makes good sense. We have no
early experience of death and hence no fear of it. What we know and fear
is the loss of the object. How, then, could Klein oppose his position? At
first it seems she does so by being especially ‘Freudian’—that is, by taking
a rather abstract, theoretical stance, stereotypically associated with Freud
in some of the relevant literature. She offers the following argument: “If
we assume the existence of a death instinct, we must also assume that in
the deepest layers of the mind there is a response to this instinct in the
form of fear of annihilation of life” (Klein, 1948, p. 29). Her argument,
however, is not cogent: as noted earlier, the presence of the instinct is not
a sufficient condition for fearing it. To further emphasize this point, the
fact that we have a life instinct does not mean that we must also have a
fear of life.
To this theoretical argument Klein adds clinical considerations. On
Freud’s objections to the existence of an early experience of death that
could serve as the grounds for the fear, Klein comments thus: “I do not
share this view because my analytic observations show that there is in the
unconscious a fear of annihilation of life” (ibid.). To substantiate this, she
describes some clinical material from the analyses of children, for example,
fears of being torn apart or devoured by animals. But it may be seen that
this, too, is an unsatisfactory response to Freud: it is unclear how such clin-
ical descriptions of the fear of death in and of themselves could support the
position that this fear is to be regarded as a foundational source of anxiety,
that no other more immediate experience underlies it.
Similarly, in On the theory of anxiety and guilt, Klein (1948) cites a refer-
ence in Freud to the fear of being eaten and adds: “This in my view is an
undisguised expression of the fear of total annihilation of the self” (p. 30).
But the justification for this view is not obvious. In the text cited, Freud
considers the fear of being devoured to be one of the forms erotic masoch-
ism may take, along with the wish to be beaten, the phantasy of castration,
and the (male) idea of being copulated with and giving birth (Freud, 1924,
p. 165). He, for one, does not feel compelled to regard it as an expression
of an unconscious fear of death.
Despite these apparent inadequacies in her argument, despite the failure
of the explanations Klein herself puts forth to justify her position on the
fear of death in anxiety, I believe Klein’s position has grounds—Kleinian
grounds. That is, I have found that the conceptual framework of Klein’s
thinking provides support for the notion that the fear of death is a primary

Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95

618 R. B. Blass

anxiety which Klein herself did not articulate,3 the Kleinian grounds—as
they emerged in my effort to understand the conundrum of Klein’s position
(in the face of Freud’s compelling arguments)—have to do with the Klei-
nian view of internal object relations, their origin, and the way their inner
relations affect our states of mind. To understand this it is necessary to
articulate and highlight certain differences between Klein’s and Freud’s
notions of object relations. This requires taking a closer look at the mean-
ings and implications of some well-known analytic ideas and distinctions, to
which I now turn.

Differences between Freud’s and Klein’s conceptions of

internal object relations
Central to Klein’s thinking on internal object relations is the idea that
the self should be understood as being composed of relationships between
multiple parts. This focus characterizes her thinking about the self and
relationships in both the paranoid–schizoid and the depressive positions,
and goes beyond a concern with part-objects alone. For example, from a
Kleinian perspective, in my relationship with a maternal object in my
inner world, both myself and the maternal object are regarded as parts of
myself and as composed of various parts of myself (e.g. Klein, 1937, pp.
338–40). Moreover, according to Klein, our phantasized relationships
between these parts are the building blocks of our mind (Isaacs, 1943).
Changes in our phantasies have a direct and concrete impact on our
states of mind. Thus if in my phantasy I have attacked my maternal
object, not only is part of myself under attack, but also part of my mind
may be damaged. No one has better described this than Susan Isaacs in
her well-known The nature and function of phantasy offered as one of the
papers of the Controversial Discussions of the British Psycho-analytical
Society. In the first published version of that paper she writes: “‘Mere’
beliefs about internal objects . . . lead to real effects . . . profound changes
in the ego character and personality” (Isaacs, 1948, p. 92). And she
explains that the effects pertain to the very capacity to think. She
explains:

When the child feels he has dismembered his mother, his mental life is split and disin-
tegrated—he shows the most acute anxiety, he is confused and behaves chaotically,
he cannot see or hear or control what he does and says, and so on. It is not
that, first, his mental life becomes disintegrated and he then interprets this as hav-
ing dismembered his mother; it is because he wants to dismember his mother,
intends to, tries to and in imagination does so, that he feels his own ego to be split
and disintegrated, and shows in his behaviour that ‘mental disintegration’ which we
can describe and label and talk about.

3
One may imagine that Klein was not aware of this line of support and it is an interesting question
whether she would be inclined to adopt it. One may only speculate in this regard as it would depend on
many unknown factors (e.g. on the extent to which Klein could come to recognize the limitations of her
own arguments). It is important to note, however, that the validity or value of this line of support of
Klein’s position on the fear of death and the degree to which this line of support is integral to Klein’s
conceptual framework is not contingent on Klein’s explicit embrace of it.

Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95 Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis

 Klein vs. Freud on “fear of death” 619
We, for our purpose of comparing one mind with another and making generaliza-
tions, can see what happens to the child, the way he behaves, and can describe it as
‘mental disintegration’. But the child experiences it as ‘my-mother-inside-me-is-in
bits’.
(Isaacs, 1943, pp. 275–6)

It may be seen that Freud’s ideas on internal object relations, in contrast

to this Kleinian perspective, tends to focus on internal phantasies about the
actions and thoughts of objects who are experienced as more distinct from
us, from ourselves. They are more like internal representatives of external
objects or distinct agents within us (‘others’). An internal object can be
phantasized as fulfilling one’s wish, but the wishing and the wish-fulfilling
objects are not regarded as both being parts of oneself in the same sense
that they do in Klein. Consequently, for Freud, our state of mind reflects
what we imagine an internal object would do or feel in response to our
wishes and drives, and is less a direct derivative of what we feel towards the
object.
To take an example from the issue at hand, according to Freud’s thinking
in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, in the infant’s mind the internal
object (and later the superego) may withdraw love and never return if the
infant is sadistic (but it is not that the sadism itself entails the object’s
destruction). His anxiety, rather, is due to this imagined consequence. In
contrast, for Klein, the infant’s feeling that his sadistic impulses indeed
destroyed the object “contributes to the infant’s feeling that she [the object]
will never return” (Klein, 1948, p. 39). That is, the object will not return,
not because of a phantasized act of retaliation, but rather because in the
infant’s mind the object no longer exists or exists in a state of ruin. Alterna-
tively, the phantasy may, through projection, cause the infant to feel that
his mother is destroying him (and not vice versa). These possibilities are not
emphasized in Freud’s approach. Indeed, for Freud, too, our mind is made
up of internal and internalized relationships (a stance which comes through
clearly in his writings from Mourning and melancholia onwards). He too can
connect between aggression and anxiety. But there is, nevertheless, a fine,
yet significant difference having to do with the impact of the phantasized
relationship on the mind. Freud focuses on the phantasy of the object’s
response, whereas for Klein the connection between the phantasy and the
state of mind is more immediate (see Blass, 2011).
To further clarify this point one may consider the processes of identifica-
tion and projection. Freud, like Klein, posits that our phantasies shape who
we are and how we think in part through processes of identification (e.g.
with an ideal object in narcissism, with an aggressive one in depression).
However, here too, one finds that in Freud there is a clearer distinction
than in Klein between myself and the object—in this case, the others with
whom I am identified. In Freud’s writings there is an ‘I’ who is identified
with this object, rather than the ‘I’ actually becoming the object (Compton,
1985, p. 295). Similarly in regard to projection, in Freud’s writing, when
one phantasizes expelling from oneself all that is bad (Freud, 1925, p. 237),
the bad is usually expelled into the external world in such a way that an

Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95

620 R. B. Blass

external—not internal—object is perceived as the source of danger (as in

phobias). In contrast, Klein would tend to speak of the badness being
expelled into the internal object, which then immediately damages the self.
Indeed Freud’s ideas on identification are multi-faceted and change over the
years (Compton, 1985) so that at points they may appear closer to those of
Klein (e.g. in some descriptions of the relations between the ego and the
superego (Freud, 1923, part 3; see Blass, in press)). But one may note that
the two approaches have basically different tendencies: While for both
Freud and Klein processes of identification and projection are between me
and my objects, for Klein in this relationship I am also my objects (although
not only). Spillius takes note of the contrast of this Kleinian stance with
that of Freud. She writes: “What Klein did . . . was to add depth and mean-
ing to Freud’s concept of projection by emphasizing that one cannot project
impulses without projecting part of the ego” (Spillius, 1983, p. 322). In
other words, in Klein the phantasy of projection (as well as that of introjec-
tion) will have a very immediate effect on the state of one’s mind.
While perhaps less at the centre of attention in the past 20 years this
Kleinian distinction regarding the nature of object relations, in effect, has
been a central point of contention between classical and Kleinian analysts,
finding expressions in critiques of Klein for being too focused on relation-
ships within the internal world, blurring distinctions between psychic struc-
tures (especially the ego and the superego) and allowing for phantasy
regarding structures to directly influence mental functioning in ways that
are untenable (Glover, 1945; Yorke, 1971).

How Klein’s conception of object relations grounds her

theory of anxiety
The significance of these differences between Klein’s and Freud’s conceptu-
alizations of inner object relationships may, in part, be seen in the way they
provide the missing ground for Klein’s view of there being a fear of death
in the unconscious (despite Freud’s objections). Three steps are involved.
Firstly, Klein’s conceptualization suggests a close connection between our
destructiveness and the fear of our own death. This is because the destroyed
object, which is the inherent expression of the person’s destructive impulses,
is regarded as a destroyed part of the self. Moreover, one’s self is felt to be
destroyed through projection of the destructive impulse into the attacked
object (and thus suffering the phantasied fate of object in a live and imme-
diate way). That is, as we have seen, for Klein (in contrast to Freud) the
absence or even perceived destructiveness of the object is not a phantasied
reaction to our own destructiveness; it is not an imagined future response to
what we do to it. Rather, our projection of our destructiveness and our
attacks on the object immediately shape the object. By shaping the object,
they also shape our own selves. Given that the object is an internal part of
the self, our destructiveness towards the object destroys it and us. In other
words, it may be said that in a sense we do actually undergo self-destruc-
tion. This provides an event of death which, Freud argued, would have to
be experienced for one to have an unconscious fear of death.

Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95 Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis

 Klein vs. Freud on “fear of death” 621

Next, Klein’s addition explains how it could be that death could be experi-
enced. As we have seen, for the fear of death to be a primary source of anx-
iety (and not just a superficial experience, with another more basic anxiety
at its source), there would have be some primary experience of death.
Freud, however, pointed out that the notion of experiencing death is almost
a contradiction in terms. If there is experience, there is not death. We also
saw that Klein’s logical rejoinder—that there must be an early unconscious
fear of death because of the very existence of the death instinct—is inade-
quate. An impulse to seek death does not necessarily imply an impulse to
fear or avoid it. But Klein’s awareness of multiple relations between parts
of the self does resolve the problems Freud point to. It allows for a notion
of the subject being dead and yet experiencing. That is, one part of oneself
can be completely dead and gone, and at the same time experienced as such
by another part of the self that is still alive. Within Klein’s framework and
her concept of splitting within the self, the fact that it is only a part of one-
self that is felt to be dead makes the experience no less real or total.
Finally, Klein’s addition regarding how phantasied internal relationships
affect a person’s state of mind offers a response to the issue that Freud
raised regarding what could be experienced of death or annihilation that
would allow one to fear it. In what way could there be an immediate and
early experience of death? What is the content of this experience? The clini-
cal examples of what seem to be almost explicit fear of physical death
offered by Klein and her followers point to the involvement of several dif-
ferent kinds of experience, but many are problematic. One of these is the
state of painful damage to the self, as in the case of being trampled and
torn apart by wild animals (Klein, 1948, p. 29). Pain, however, is not the
same as death and, as with castration, the state of being torn apart itself
does not immediately resolve the question of what about the experience is
specifically anxiety-arousing, what the primary anxiety behind the experi-
ence is. To say that it is the anticipation of death would be to beg the ques-
tion, and we have seen that Freud understood the anxiety of such states
without reference to fear of death. Another kind of experience put forward
as an instance of a fear of death is that of being devoured. Here it is not
pain or dismemberment that is highlighted, but the loss of oneself in
another, of being completely incorporated. But as noted earlier the tie
between the overt fear of being devoured and that of death is not obvious.
Moreover, we never bodily experienced being dismembered or devoured
and accordingly we cannot really imagine what that would be like. This is
what led Freud to explanations in terms of other underlying fears that are
tied to immediately experienced events.
While such clinical examples of seemingly explicit fear of bodily death
offered by Klein and her followers fail to resolve the issue of what could be
the nature of the immediate experience of death in which the fear of it is
grounded, Klein’s view that internal relationships directly impact a person’s
state of mind suggests a solution. While we do not know what it is like to
be devoured and to no longer exist and thus cannot actually fear these
experiences, in our internal object relationships we do know what it is to
have parts of our mind taken over and eaten up. Freud, too, was aware of
Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95
622 R. B. Blass

such mental experience. In his Ego and the Id, he writes: “At the very begin-
ning, in the individual’s primitive oral phase, object-cathexis and identifica-
tions are no doubt indistinguishable from each other” (1923, p. 29). In
other words, in our oral phantasies, to love the object is in a certain sense
to devour him, and this changes our mind (by forming our identifications).
But Klein’s focus on phantasy’s immediate impact on reality allows her to
take this further. According to Klein phantasy in regard to internal objects
not only has an immediate impact on the state of the internal objects and
consequently on one’s self; wishing to destroy the internal object could not
only result in our having destroyed that object inside us. Rather, as we have
seen, this impact on the internal object and the self also entails an impor-
tant impact on the mind itself, on the capacity to think.
In other words, for Klein, to have a phantasy of a devouring object is
not only to feel incorporated into another; it also means experiencing the
death of the mind—or, more precisely, the death of part of the mind, with
another part experiencing the death. One’s mind is felt to be no longer there
or no longer able to think (e.g. Klein, 1959, p. 253). In Notes on some schi-
zoid mechanisms, when Klein (1946a) discusses the “primary anxiety of
being annihilated by a destructive force within” as a very direct manifesta-
tion of the death instinct, she ties it to the ego “falling to pieces” (p. 5).
This breakdown of the mind is regarded as a consequence of the destructive
force and a defence against it, but also as one of its forms of expression.
Here one should note that for Klein the death of the mind is death, not a
watered-down, limited version of it. She explains, for example, that Schre-
ber’s “world catastrophe” phantasy is based on “one part of the ego annihi-
lating other parts” (Klein, 1946a, p. 24) and she adds:

If the ego and the internalized objects are felt to be in bits, an internal catastrophe
is experienced by the infant which both extends to the external world and is pro-
jected on to it.
(ibid.)

In the light of this one may suggest that the fear of bodily death which
Klein finds in her cases can be regarded as a reflection of the fear of the
death of the mind, which one has experienced and thus can indeed be
feared.
Moreover, in contrast to a more general, corporeal, experience of death,
which we simply do not feel, there are many opportunities in daily life and
from very early on for us to experience directly the death of our thinking.
This happens when we are “absent-minded”, when we forget what we know,
when we lose ourselves in an experience with another. Another familiar
experience is the state of disintegration, when we are overwhelmed and feel
that we are, as Klein calls it, “falling to pieces” (ibid., p. 5) or “to bits”
(1946b, p. 101), which she regards as an actual state of the ego, not only a
feeling or fear in relation to it. With this perspective in mind, it is interest-
ing to note that some of the prototypical Kleinian examples of the manifes-
tation of the death instinct describe a pull not towards death per se, but

Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95 Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis

 Klein vs. Freud on “fear of death” 623

towards the dispersal of parts of one’s mind, an annihilation of the capacity

to perceive and experience (see Bell, 2007; Klein, 1946; Segal, 1993). Segal
(1993), in fact, defines the death instinct as encountered in clinical practice
as a drive to “annihilate the perceiving experiencing self” (p. 55) and the
object perceived, which she adds are “hardly distinguishable from one
another” (p. 56). In one of her clinical illustrations, for example, she
describes her patient, dominated by a pull towards death, as living in and
experiencing a state of mental devastation, “subjected to a perpetual fall-
out” (p. 57). Susan Isaacs’s description (cited above) of the child’s experi-
ence of dismembering the mother and the consequent splitting and disinte-
gration of the child’s mental life refers to a similar kind of dispersal of the
mind that occurs when the death instinct is directed towards others.
And in his description of different phenomenological forms in which the
death drive is expressed, David Bell (2007) refers to both a state of a
destruction of functions of the self and what he refers to as “a lure into
mindlessness”. Such states of dismemberment or disintegration are of spe-
cial interest because they come experientially close to the primary anxiety
state described by Freud—the state of being overwhelmed by stimulation
without there being present any coherent sense of self that could do some-
thing with this stimulation. Money-Kyrle (1955), for one, holds that “the
terror of disintegration”, which he considers to be an expression of the fear
of death, “may be equated with Freud’s concept of traumatic anxiety”
(p. 502).
In sum, the experience on which Klein’s fear of death rests is not simply
and obviously an instance of death. Rather, it rests on a range of experi-
ences associated with the death of the mind, which emerge when, in phantasy,
the self is destroyed. As we have seen, these experiences of death can be
experienced and yet be associated with the non-being of the experiencer
because of Klein’s way of conceiving of the complex relationships that exist
between one’s internal objects (e.g. one part can die and another can experi-
ence its death). Moreover, these may be subjectively felt from early on in
relation to our thought processes (e.g. in moments of ‘losing one’s self’). At
points, these experiences of death seem close to what Freud describes
regarding the helpless and overly stimulated state of mind at birth. Finally,
because Klein posits such a close, internal relation between self and objects,
the phantasy of destruction results in an experience of there being a
destroyed and hence absent object within, and the projection of destruction
results in an experience of a destructive object within. In both situations the
total destruction and disappearance of parts of the self become imminent.

The fruitful dialogue between Freud and Klein in the discourse

over anxiety
By shedding light on the metapsychological differences that ground Freud
and Klein’s divergent views of the primary anxiety, we are forced to look
beyond more superficial differences between the two. Their divergence is
not based on incidental clinical material or personal preferences for certain
kinds of theories. Nor is it that Freud was concerned with energy but Klein

Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95

624 R. B. Blass

with the content of phantasies. Rather, their differences are grounded in dif-
ferent understandings of the fundamental relational reality of the psyche.
Both are concerned with internal phantasized relations—the differences lie
in the way they conceive of them.
Freud’s view of this reality encourages us to think in terms of the impact
of the infant’s relationships with others on the fulfilment of his needs and
wishes and on his wellbeing as a whole. In neurosis, according to Freud, a
relational situation of danger is ‘wrongly’ invoked because of one’s desires
(e.g. castration will be feared because of oedipal wishes) (Freud, 1924). The
state of ultimate danger—the source of primary anxiety—has to be accessi-
ble to the infant’s subjectivity. In his effort to define this primary source,
Freud elaborates on various phantasied losses and shows how even when
they seem to be focused on the individual and the wish to preserve his inter-
ests and prevent self-harm (as in the danger of castration or death), they
are actually fundamentally relational in nature. The fear of harm to the self
is actually a fear of loss of relationship to the loved object. But then again,
the fear of the loss of the relationship is because in the absence of relation-
ship one is overwhelmed with stimulation. Freud ultimately concludes,
through the complex development of his ideas, that this danger of being
overwhelmed by stimulation in the face of loss (associated with various spe-
cific phantasies) is the primary source of anxiety. This is a danger to the
individual’s total being. This conception has the advantage of offering a
coherent account of the specific feeling of anxiety and the tension that is
associated with it.
In contrast, Klein draws our attention to the multiple relationships
between different objects within the self and to the immediate connections
between the self and these objects. Danger is conceived more directly as
being experienced by one part of us in relation to another. The danger is
not to the self in toto, but rather to parts of the self and to the mind that is
made up of those parts.
This paper has also uncovered a tie between the thinking of Freud and
Klein in relation to primary anxiety that had not been previously recog-
nized. While their explicit views and their conceptions of object relations
that underlie them clearly differ, both find the source of primary anxiety in
a state of disintegration and loss of a potential for psychic response. For
Freud, this takes the form of being helplessly stimulated in the face of loss;
for Klein, it is the disintegration of the mind.

Concluding remarks on the nature and value of this study

In drawing out this discourse over the nature of anxiety it becomes appar-
ent that Freud’s line of thinking poses questions to that of Klein. His stance
allows us to consider foundational aspects of Klein’s thinking on anxiety
that may get lost when her work is considered on its own. Similarly, Klein’s
stance forces us to reconsider what is basic to Freud’s.
This dialogue is, in significant ways, a latent one. As we have seen in this
‘exchange’ between Freud and Klein, their stances on the fear of death ulti-
mately find good support by grounding them on basic tenets integral to

Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95 Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis

 Klein vs. Freud on “fear of death” 625

their respective frameworks of thinking, but not explicitly invoked by them

in this context. In fact, I have stressed that Klein’s explicit arguments in
support of the notion that the fear of death is a primary anxiety are not
only in some respects misguided, but seem to be at odds with her own theo-
retical approach. This is made especially clear by Freud’s ‘Kleinian argu-
ments against’ it. Moreover, counter to Klein’s claims, her view of the fear
of death is not a logical derivative of the very existence of the death
instinct, nor is it the kind of thing that could be self-evident in clinical
material.
But it is precisely the misguided nature of some of the explicit argu-
ments that makes the exposure of the latent considerations ever more
important. Rather than simply reject the claims regarding primary anxiety
as founded on error or accept them on tradition or authority these consid-
erations allow us to make sense of the claims. We can see how the ways
that Freud and Klein conceive of death and the death instinct influence
whether or not they posit a direct connection between the instinct and the
fear of death and whether or not they regard the fear as self-evident in
clinical material.
As we have seen, bringing this latent dialogue between Freud and Klein
to the fore more generally enriches our understanding of their thinking,
allowing us to discard stereotypic and more superficial comparisons between
them. While clarifying the nature and grounds of their similarities and dif-
ferences in regard to anxiety and fear of death, it also articulates the impli-
cations of their broader theoretical frameworks. It especially makes clear
how the understanding of anxiety is tied to the understanding of internal
object relations in ways that Klein and Freud did not themselves explicitly
articulate. But at the same time the nature of the connections between other
aspects of the analytic network of ideas (e.g. phantasy, thinking) become
more immediately apparent as well.
It should be noted that alongside its theoretical value this kind of under-
standing also contributes to analytic practice. Recognizing additional forms
and meanings of anxiety that may come into play allows for a greater
appreciation of the complexity of basic human fears and their expression in
the analytic situation and thus for more nuanced interpretation. Moreover,
grasp of the true considerations on which basic analytic ideas are founded
can impact the stance and sense of conviction from which interpretations
are offered. To explain: I have suggested that Freud’s and Klein’s broader
conceptual frameworks are integral to their thinking on anxiety and the fear
of death even when these frameworks have not been explicitly articulated.
When Klein claims to immediately see the unconscious fear of death in her
clinical material it is because her conceptual framework shapes the way she
was looking and what she can see. To uphold such claims and to interpret
on their basis without the same lived experience of the conceptual frame-
work from which they emerge is a very different thing. The claims and the
interpretations lose something of their meaning and the force of their
meaning. There is then the danger of their being determined by dogmatic
considerations rather than by understanding. Articulating the latent concep-
tual frameworks of Klein’s thinking, which, as time passes, may be less
Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95
626 R. B. Blass

immediately present than in the past, allows the meanings of our under-
standing in the analytic situation to come alive.

Translations of summary

Ein ‘Angst vor dem Tod’, wie die prima €re Angst: Wie und warum Klein unterscheidet sich von
Freud. Es ist wohlbekannt, dass Melanie Klein die ‘Todesangst’ als prim€are Angstquelle betrachtete und
dass sie mit ihrer Position ausdr€ucklich Stellung gegen Sigmund Freud bezog, der behauptete, dass die
Angst vor dem Tod in keiner Weise oder Form eine Angstquelle bilden k€ onne. In einem fr€uheren Beitrag
€ber Freuds Hemmung, Symptom und Angst legte die Autorin (Blass, 2013) dar, dass Freud seine Ableh-
u
nung der Todesangst als Angstquelle entgegen der u €blichen Darstellungen in der Literatur auf relationale
und erfahrungsbezogene Faktoren st€ utzte, die man gew€ ohnlich mit kleinianischen Psychoanalytikern in
Verbindung bringt. Im Lichte dieser Affinit€at Freuds zu Klein stellt sich die Frage, woher ihre Differen-
zen in diesem Kontext tats€achlich r€uhrten. Der vorliegende Beitrag formuliert eine Antwort auf diese
Frage. Die Autorin legt zun€achst einige ihrer fr€
uheren Erkenntnisse u€ber die Gr€ unde dar, die Freud ve-
ranlassten, die Todesangst als Angstquelle zu verwerfen, und wendet sich im Anschluss daran einer Un-
tersuchung der Beweggr€ unde zu, die Klein veranlassten, sie als solche anzuerkennen. Diese
Untersuchung weist u € ber Kleins explizite Aussagen zu diesem Thema hinaus und wirft neues Licht auf
die Beziehung zwischen ihren Auffassungen von Tod und Angst einerseits und Freuds Sichtweise ander-
erseits. Das Verst€andnis der Beziehung zwischen Freuds und Kleins Konzeptualisierungen der Psyche
und ihrer inneren Objektbeziehungen wird dadurch vertieft und l€asst sowohl u € berraschende gemeinsame
Grundlagen als auch basale Unterschiede erkennbar werden.
Del ‘temor a la muerte’ como una ansiedad primaria. Es bien conocido que Melanie Klein sostiene
la vision de que el ‘temor a la muerte’ es la fuente primaria de ansiedad y que su posici on se opone
explıcitamente a la de Freud. En un artıculo previo sobre Inhibicion, sıntoma y angustia de Freud (Blass,
2013), el autor argumenta que contra lo que se suele afirmar en la literatura, las consideraciones de
Freud para rechazar el temor a la muerte como un fuente de ansiedad estaban basadas en factores rela-
cionales y vivenciales que estan habitualmente asociados con la perspectiva kleiniana. En vista de esta
afinidad entre Freud y Klein surge la pregunta sobre la verdadera fuente de sus diferencias en este con-
texto. Este trabajo ofrece una respuesta a esa pregunta. El autor presenta algunos de sus hallazgos tem-
pranos sobre aquello que lleva a Freud a rechazar el temor a la muerte como una fuente de ansiedad y
luego considera las investigaciones de Klein para aceptarlo. Esto nos lleva mas alla de sus afirmaciones
explıcitas en esta cuesti on de su perspectiva en relaci
on y arroja una nueva luz sobre la relaci on a la mu-
erte y a la ansiedad y la de Freud. A su vez esto profundiza la comprensi on de las relaciones entre las
conceptualizaciones de Freud y Klein sobre el psiquismo y las relaciones de objeto internas, se~ nalando
tanto el fundamento com un como las diferencias fundacionales.
Sulla ‘paura della morte’ come angoscia primaria: come e perche  Klein si differenzia da Freud.
Che Melanie Klein fosse dell’avviso che la ‘paura della morte’ e la fonte primaria dell’angoscia e un fatto
ben noto, ed e pure risaputo che la sua posizione e esplicitamente opposta a quella di Sigmund Freud, il
quale riteneva per parte sua che quella paura non pu o in alcun modo e in nessuna forma rappresentare
l’origine dell’angoscia. In un precedente articolo su Inibizione, sintomo e angoscia di Freud (Blass, 2013)
l’Autrice sosteneva che, al contrario di quanto si legge solitamente nella letteratura sull’argomento, le
considerazioni fatte da Freud nel contestare che la paura della morte possa essere una fonte di angoscia
sono fondate su fattori di tipo relazionale ed esperienziale, fattori dunque in genere collegati alla versi-
one kleiniana della psicoanalisi. Alla luce di questa affinit
a di Freud con la Klein sorge allora la doman-
da di quale sia la reale causa delle loro divergenze in questo specifico dibattito. Il presente articolo offre
una risposta a questa domanda. L’autrice inizia con l’esporre alcune parti del suo precedente studio, in
cui si concentrava sulle motivazioni che avevano spinto Freud a rifiutare l’idea della paura della morte
come fonte di angoscia, e procede poi ad esaminare le diverse considerazioni che hanno invece portato
la Klein ad accettarla. L’indagine finisce tuttavia per condurre il discorso ben al di la delle dichiarazioni
esplicite fatte dalla Klein a questo proposito, e muovendo da una nuova prospettiva fa luce sulla relazi-
one tra le sue idee sulla morte e l’angoscia e quelle di Freud. Questa diversa prospettiva contribuisce a
sua volta ad approfondire la comprensione del rapporto tra la concettualizzazione della mente e delle
sue relazioni oggettuali interne proposta da Freud e quella ipotizzata dalla Klein. Emerge a tale proposi-
to, accanto a fondamentali differenze, anche un sorprendente numero di aspetti condivisi.

Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95 Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis

 Klein vs. Freud on “fear of death” 627

References
Blass RB (2011). On the immediacy of unconscious truth: understanding Betty Joseph’s “here and
now” through comparison with alternative views of it outside of and within Kleinian thinking. Int J
Psychoanal 92:1137–57.
Blass RB (2012). The ego according to Klein: back to Freud and beyond. Int J Psychoanal 93:151–66.
Blass RB (2013). On the complex, relational nature of Freud’s thinking on primary anxiety in
Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety: Differences from and ties to Klein. In: Arbiser S, Schneider J,
editors. On Freud’s Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, 119–132. London: Karnac.
Blass RB. (in press). Conceptualizing splitting: on the different meanings of splitting and their
implications for the understanding of the person and the analytic process. Int J Psychoanal.
Bell D (2007). The death drive: Phenomenological perspectives in contemporary Kleinian theory.
Paper presented at the Hanna Segal Today Conference, University College London, 2 December.
Brenner C (1950). Review of ‘A contribution to the theory of anxiety and guilt’ by Melanie Klein.
Psychoanal Q 19:607–09.
Compton A (1972). Study of the psychoanalytic theory of anxiety. II. Developments in the theory of
anxiety since 1926. J Am Psychoanal Assoc 20:341–394.
Compton A (1985). The concept of identification in the work of Freud, Ferenczi, and Abraham: A
review and commentary. Psychoanal Q 54:200–33.
De Bianchedi ET, Scalozub de Boschan L, de Cortin ~as LP, de Piccolo EG (1988). Theories on
anxiety in Freud and Melanie Klein: Their metapsychological status. Int J Psychoanal 69:359–68.
Freud S (1923). The ego and the id. SE 19, 1–59.
Freud S (1924). The dissolution of the Oedipus complex. SE 19, 171–9.
Freud S (1925). Negation. SE 19, 233–40.
Freud S (1926). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. SE 22, 75–174.
Glover E (1945). Examination of the Klein system of child psychology. Psychoanal Study Child 1:75–
118.
Hinshelwood RD (1989). A dictionary of Kleinian thought. London: Free Association.
Isaacs S (1943). The nature and function of phantasy In: King P, Steiner R, editors. The Freud–Klein
controversies 1941–45, 264–321. London and New York: Routledge, 1991.
Isaacs S (1948). The nature and function of phantasy. Int J Psychoanal 29:73–97.
Klein M (1937). Love, guilt and reparation In: Klein M. Love, guilt and reparation and other works
1921–1945, 306–43. London: Hogarth, 1975.
Klein M (1946a). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. In: Klein M. Envy and gratitude and other
works 1946–1963, 1–24. London: Hogarth, 1975.
Klein M (1946b). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. Int J Psycho-Anal 27:99–110.
Klein M (1948). On the theory of anxiety and guilt. In: Klein M. Envy and gratitud and other works
1946–1963, 25–42. London: Hogarth, 1975.
Klein M (1959). Our adult world and its roots in infancy. In: Klein M. Envy and gratitude and other
works 1946–1963, 247–63. London: Hogarth, 1975.
Money-Kyrle RE (1955). An inconclusive contribution to the theory of the death instinct. In: Klein M,
Heimann P, Money-Kyrle RE, editors. New directions in psychoanalysis, 499–509. London:
Tavistock, 1955.
Segal H (1993). On the clinical usefulness of the concept of death instinct. Int J Psychoanal 74:55–61.
Spillius EB (1983). Some Developments from the work of Melanie Klein. Int J Psycho-Anal 64:321–32.
Spillius EB, Milton J, Garvey P, Couve C, Steiner D (2011). The new dictionary of Kleinian thought.
London: Routledge.
Yorke C (1971). Some suggestions for a critique of Kleinian psychology. Psychoanal Stud Child
26:129–55.
Zetzel ER (1956). An approach to the relation between content and concept in psychoanalytic theory
(with special reference to the work of Melanie Klein and her followers). Psychoanal Stud Child
11:99–121.

Copyright © 2014 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2014) 95