The author attempts to clarify the general relationship of instinct and psychic pain and pleasure to emotion. Emotion derives its 'emotive nature' from instinctual discharge, which can be initiated by the individual's needs or by objects 'real or mental' or conscious or unconscious. 'Emotion cannot be understood directly because of its integrated, synthetic nature… To speak of the repression of an emotion makes no sense.' The concept of emotional expression is complex, and difficult to define in terms of purpose, object, and goal, for 'an emotion must be taken more as a symptom than as a motive or a response to a specific stimulus'.