Blatt and Beck have from different theoretical perspectives discovered two personality styles, an anaclitic/sociotropic, sensitive to separation, and an introjective/autonomous, for whom independence is important. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether these styles could be detected in people's unconscious, and to link unconscious reactions to subliminal stimulation to depression proneness. Sex differences were investigated, as were the influence of family experiences for these personality styles. In a counterbalanced within-groups experiment 36 participants, 11 men and 25 women (university students) filled out the BDI, DEQ, and PSI self-report forms. They were then exposed to the subliminal experimental phrases "I am abandoned" (anaclitic), "I am a failure" (introjective), and the control phrase "I am able to read". A modified version of the mood measure Early Memories Test (EMT) was used as dependent measure. The results show that depression proneness (measured by the BDI) correlates significantly with reactions to the anaclitic phrase. There were also significant correlations between anaclitic/sociotropic personality (measured by DEQ and PSI) and reactions to the anaclitic phrase. Trend significance for a sex difference was found for  on the PSI autonomy scale, such that men were more sensitive to issues of autonomy. It was also found that participants who had grown up with a dominant mother rated themselves a s more anaclitic that those who had grown up with a dominant father ( p<.05). These people also showed stronger negative reactions to the subliminal anaclitic phrase ( p<.10). It is concluded that the only the anaclitic style was detected using these subliminal phrases. Degree of depression influences the degree of negative reaction to the phrases.