ABSTRACT
John Mack focused on anxiety dreams in his enquiry into the development of children's dreams. Anxiety dreams are of especial interest as they reveal what, if any, inner resources are available to a child attempting to cope with great anxiety at different phases of development. The developments that can be seen in anxiety dreams therefore tell us more about early defence mechanisms than do wish-fulfilling dreams. The changes in structure and form, which can be observed in children's dreams in early childhood, especially between the ages of two and five, provide us with important insights into the increasing structural complexity within the child's psychic life. The dream sequence from the life of a child developing normally in a stable family has given us pointers to mental developments that, in time, helped the child to cope with the increasingly complex inner and outer world in which he is maturing and growing.
