The phrase "a central preoccupation" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a primary concern or focus of interest in a particular context or discussion.
Example: "In her research, climate change emerged as a central preoccupation that influenced her findings."
Alternatives: "a primary concern" or "a main focus".
"But it's not a central preoccupation.
"What Otto wanted" is a central preoccupation of both groups.
That's when access to foreign oil became a central preoccupation of U.S. foreign and security policy.
A central preoccupation of the book is the destruction of innocence.
Language – its imperfections, its tyranny – has long been a central preoccupation for Samuel Beckett.
Mr. Price said that a central preoccupation in writing the play was the influence that Wales had on Private Manning.
This last phrase concisely expresses Jay's central preoccupation as a scholar and a performer.
With the directness of the autodidact, and the lack of embarrassment of someone who, on some level, is past caring, he rambles happily on, unconsciously emphasising his central preoccupation as a knowledge-seeker, an experience-ferreter, and someone who appears to enjoy being carried along by life.
A song-and-dance show on Forty-sixth Street can occasionally touch so profoundly on some central preoccupation of a period that, even if relatively few of us actually get to see it live, it still becomes a kind of hearth at the center of a national celebration.
The idea that Parmenides' arguments so problematized the phenomenon of change as to make developing an adequate theoretical account of it the central preoccupation of subsequent Presocratic natural philosophers is a commonplace of modern historical narratives.
Her latest work Love and Information has no named characters, rather a series of unnamed voices in a collection of encounters circling around the central preoccupation.
