The dream of having been born of noble or otherwise more important parentage connoted in one clinical instance not only the desire for the happier days when the parents were thought of as exalted human beings, as Freud suggested, but also served an integrative function of the ego in dealing with shame and helplessness from an unresolved oral fixation. After the point has been reached where these cravings can no longer be denied, they are rationalized by a fantasy of exalted birth which also sooner or later provides unlimited gratification.