Sigmund Freud er i godt humør og skriver til sin venn Wilhelm Fliess om en erkjennelse han har gjort i forhold til sammenhengen mellom barndomsminner, seksualitet og fantasier

Sigmund Freud skriver til sin venn Wilhelm Fliess i Berlin (her gjengitt i engelsk oversettelse -- originalen er på tysk):

"Dear Wilhelm, So I am the first to give news of himself after all. After the fall of the meteor gleams a light that brightens the gloomy sky for a long while thereafter. For me it is not yet extinguished. In this brightness, then, I suddenly glimpsed several things, and then even the first professional vexations of the New Year could not disturb my good mood. In the first place, a small bit of my self-analysis has forced its way through and confirmed that fantasies are products of later periods and are projeced back from what was then the present into earliest childhood; the manner in which this occurs also emerged -- once again, by a verbal link.

To the question "What happened in earliest childhood?" the answer is, "Nothing, but the germ of a sexual implulse existed." The thing would be easy and a pleasure to tell you, but writing it out would take half a sheet so [I shall keep it] for our congress at Easter, together with other elucidations of the story of my early years. In the second place, I have grasoed the meaning of a new psychic element which I conceive to be of general significance and a preliminary stage of symptoms (even before fantasy)."