Two groups of patients who had typical but different anxiety dreams are discussed. 'Falling' dreams were characteristic of one group; 'attack' dreams of the other. The dreams were correlated with character type. The 'falling' dream person is found to be fixated in an earlier symbiotic dependency relation with the mother and has a history of early maternal neglect or separation. The 'attack' dream individual has an intense but conflictual maternal relationship with the fixation point closer to the Oedipus. 'Falling' dream patients experienced separation anxiety in relation to part objects; 'attack' dream patients experienced castration anxiety in relation to whole objects. Defense mechanisms were respectively displacement and denial versus projection and introjection.