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1. It is convenient to regard thinking as dependent on the successful outcome of two main mental developments. The first is the development of thoughts. They require an apparatus to cope with them. The second development, therefore, is of this apparatus that I shall provisionally call thinking. Thinking has to be called into existence to cope with thoughts. It will be noted that this differs from any theory of thought as a product of thinking, in that thinking is a development forced on the psyche by the pressure of thoughts - not the other way round (1962a, 306).
1.1 ‘Thoughts’ may be classified, according to the nature of their developmental history, as pre-conceptions, conceptions or thoughts, and finally concepts. Concepts are named and therefore fixed conceptions or thoughts. The conception is initiated by the conjunction of a pre-conception with a realization. The pre-conception may be regarded as the analogue in psycho-analysis of Kant's concept of ‘empty thoughts’. Psycho-analytically the theory that the infant has an inborn disposition corresponding to an expectation of a breast may be used to supply a model. When the pre-conception is brought into contact with a realization that approximates to it, the mental outcome is a conception. Put in another way […] every junction of a preconception with its realization produces a conception (1962a, 306).
1.2 I shall limit the term ‘thought’ to the mating of a pre-conception with a frustration (1962a, 307).
1.3 If the capacity for toleration of frustration is sufficient the ‘no-breast’ inside becomes a thought, and an apparatus for ‘thinking it’ develops (1962a, 307).