Family romance
The family romance is a psychological complex identified by Sigmund Freud in an essay he wrote in 1909 entitled "The Family Romances." In it he describes various phases a child experiences as he or she must confront the fact that the parents are not wholly emotionally available. Children have asexual feelings of jealousy within the family, and as a defense young children or adolescents fantasize that they are really the children of parents of higher social standing than their actual parents.