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Problems of instinct and emotion belong to the main body of psychoanalytic theory and must be considered for inclusion amongst the elements of psychoanalysis as they appear in psychoanalytic practice.
The emotion to which attention is drawn should be obvious to the analyst, but unobserved by the patient; an emotion that is obvious to the patient is usually painfully obvious and avoidance of unnecessary pain must be one aim in the exercise of analytic intuition. Since the analyst's capacity for intuition should enable him to demonstrate an emotion before it has become painfully obvious it would help if our search for the elements of emotions was directed to making intuitive deductions easier. The sexual instinct is an integral part of psychoanalytic theory, but the element of sex in the sense of something for which I need to look is not sex but that from which the presence of sex may be deduced. But for my purpose the term ‘element’ cannot be properly used to denote something that would appear to be a property of some more fundamental thing whose presence it betrays. Therefore the element I choose is not a sign of sexuality but a precursor of sexuality. Amongst the elements that we seek there must be the precursor of emotion, not an emotion itself unless it is the precursor of some emotion other than itself. Thus, if the hate that a patient is experiencing is a precursor of love its virtue as an element resides in its quality as a precursor of love and not in its being hate. And so for all other emotions.
I am adumbrating, in the domain of emotion, something that is reminiscent of the relationship of preconception to conception.
If interpretations forestall the development of emotions by illuminating their precursors it follows that sexual and other feelings
should not be regarded as elements. The counterpart of the preconception is the premonition. Directly observed emotional states are significant only as premonitions.
I have defined the pre-conception as an element