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The anxiety of man as a being destined to be free and to select, yet at the same time knowing that death is forthcoming, is studied by the author in its different aspects. Death as disintegration and distortion of the body, as a dissolution of the personality (equated with being crazy), and the different ways in which death and its anxiety are manifested in individuals, as well as in social groups, are well delineated.
It is suggested that man in general has an unconscious fantasy of annihilation which is determined by previous experiences, such as birth and anxiety associated with urges or impulses to get rid of one's own body. This basic unconscious fantasy is associated with the death instinct, and further related to the feelings of retaining and relinquishing the mother at the same time. In essence the author's thesis is that the fears connected with death are primarily the product of unconscious fantasies regarding death and are reproductions of unconscious fantasies about pre-, intra-, and postnatal processes. Therefore, there may be different ways of interpreting the fantasies, since death could be considered a birth, or the means of finally ending the birth process, or a way of returning to the mother's womb.