ABSTRACT
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. The sexual instinct is an integral part of psychoanalytic theory, but the element of sex in the sense of something for which the author needs to look is not sex but that from which the presence of sex may be deduced. The distinction between pre-conception and premonition facilitates the creation of a system for thinking about analytic practice; it is no more of a falsification than the separation, implied in the use of the term ‘sex’ or ‘fear’, of one emotion from another.
