Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION: Dr. Phyllis Greenacre asked whether Dr. Frosch found any relationship between the amount and extent of organization of the family romance material and the severity of the case. Except in the very gifted, it was her impression that an active and persistent family romance fantasy was frequently a sign of severe psychopathy. It stood out most clearly of all in some paranoid schizophrenics, where it was frankly delusional. In character disturbances—strikingly so in the impostor—it is lived repeatedly in florid fashion. She believes the Oedipus complex in these severe cases never fully develops; Oedipal and family romance fantasies represent an effort to reach forward and realize a relationship that has always lacked substance. In neurotics, she has found that the persistence of the fantasies indicates the invasion of the phallic phase by overly strong anality; however, disturbance in the sense of self and ability to evaluate reality is less marked in them than among psychotics and character disorders. Dr. Annie Reich felt Dr. Frosch's conception of the family romance fantasy was too wide if he included in it practically all organized fantasies. Some of the fantasies he described were more properly masturbation fantasies with thinly disguised Oedipal wishes rather than family romance fantasies. Dr. Mark Kanzer emphasized the important function of the family romance in normal individuals in weaning them away from their Oedipal attachments. In neurotics, the guilt over this wish for freedom may be too strong; thus a young man broke down after achieving success in a field different from his father. Dr. Bertram D. Lewin called attention to the frequency in treatment with which the wish to give a child is associated with fantasies of rescue from water, for instance, in the manner of Moses. He wondered whether this aspect of the family romance fantasy is not connected with another aspect, the underlying disillusionment of the child. The big disillusion