n. complete destruction. In psychoanalytic theory, annihilation is destruction of the self. In object relations theory, fear of annihilation (annihilation anxiety) is viewed as the earliest form of anxiety. Melanie Klein attributed it to the experience of the death instinct; British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott (1896–1971) saw it as the anxiety that accompanies impingements from the environment. —annihilatevb.