Concept
Family romance
A fantasy, described by Freud, in which a child imagines that its parents are not its real parents but stand-ins for others of higher standing: a way of breaking away from parents who have disappointed it while keeping the overvalued parents of early childhood. Freud's account first appeared inside Otto Rank's study of hero myths, where Rank read the myth of the exposed and rescued hero as the same fantasy on a collective scale.
- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 1
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1909 Freud's account of the family romance of neurotics was first printed within Rank's Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden (1909).
developed by
- Otto Rank 1909 Rank extended the family romance from individual fantasy to the collective myths of the hero's birth.