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…It was no small feat on your part to see the dream-book lying finished before you.2 It has come to a halt again and meanwhile the problem has deepened and widened. It seems to me as though the theory of wish-fulfilment has brought only the psychological solution and not the biological, or, rather, metapsychical one. (I am going to ask you seriously, by the way, whether I may use the name of metapsychology for my psychology that leads behind consciousness.)3 Biologically, dream-life seems to me to derive entirely from the residues of the prehistoric period of life (between the ages of one and three)-the same period which is the source of the unconscious and alone contains the aetiology of all the psychoneuroses, the period normally characterized by an amnesia analogous to hysterical amnesia. This formula suggests itself to me: What is seen in the prehistoric period produces dreams; what is heard in it produces phantasies; what is experienced sexually in it produces the psycho-neuroses.4 The repetition of what was experienced in that period is in itself the fulfilment of a wish; a recent wish only leads to a dream if it can put itself in connection with material from this prehistoric period, if the recent wish is a derivative of a prehistoric one or can get itself adopted by one. It is still an open question how far I shall be able to adhere to this extreme theory and how far I can expose it to view in the dream-book.5