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Fantasies of family romance include the fictionalization of one's origin and fantasies of rescue, as described originally by Freud and Rank. They represent Oedipal phase elaborations of fantasy formations rooted in infantile narcissism and are a response to the frustration of the basic human need for contact. The fantasy of the family romance gets its first organized impetus in the Oedipal period as a phase-specific continuation of the search for the idealized object. Through sublimation in latency and adolescence the fantasy is normally channeled into nonpathological life situations that importantly affect the daily, social, and cultural life of the adult. But many patients who have suffered severe narcissistic trauma through loss of the primary object, or by disillusionment with it, will show a disturbance in their sense of identity and an unsublimated retention of the fantasy of the family romance. One manifestation of this is the state of 'transference readiness': a propensity for transforming a present object into a significant object of the past. This readiness antedates analysis, and affects the motives for coming to treatment. It contributes vividly to the transference proper, first in the form of enactment of the positive and enhancing aspects of the romance fantasy; only later do the underlying demand, need, and rage tend to break through the defensive denial of the fantasy formation. The analysis of this relatively late accretion of dynamic content constitutes an important part of working through.