A review of psychoanalytic and philosophical writings on death anxiety indicates that it is a multifaceted phenomenon which has been interpreted at several levels of analysis—including the level of infantile conflict and intrapsychic structural tensions, the level of primary instincts, the level of object relations, and the level of ontological givens. An attempt is made to group the defenses against death anxiety into four general modes: (a) concretization, (b) being-as-a-part, (c) being-as-oneself, and (d) absolute faith. The material presented supports the thesis that death anxiety and defenses against it are important factors in human development.