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… In the first place: a small bit of my self-analysis has forced its way through, and confirmed that phantasies are products of later periods and are projected back from the then present on to the earliest childhood, and the manner in which this occurs has also emerged-once more a verbal link.2
To the question: ‘what happened in earliest childhood?’ the answer is ‘nothing’. But the germ of a sexual impulse was there. The thing would be easy and nice to tell you; but would take up half-a-dozen pages if I wrote it out, so I keep it for our meeting at Easter with some other information about my early years.
Besides this I have found another psychical element which I regard as of general significance and as being a preliminary stage of symptoms (even before phantasy).
(January 4.) I got tired yesterday, and to-day I cannot go on writing along the lines I intended because the thing is growing. There is something in it. It is dawning. In the next few days there will certainly be some addition to it. I will write to you then, when it has become clear. I will only reveal to you that the dream-pattern is capable of the most general application, that the key to hysteria as well really lies in dreams. I understand now, too, why, in spite of all my efforts, I have not yet finished the dream-book. If I wait a little longer, I shall be able to describe the mental process in dreams in such a way that it also includes the process in the formation of hysterical symptoms. So let us wait.3