The term ‘concrete’ traverses the depth-psychology corpus along several intersecting axes, generating productive tensions rather than settled consensus. At one pole, Jung and his inheritors treat the concrete as the irreducible datum of sensuous reality against which abstraction must always be measured: for Jung, the extraverted sensation type inhabits a world constituted entirely by ‘concrete, sensuously perceived objects or processes,’ and libido itself borrows the ‘concrete character’ of related philosophical concepts. At another pole, archetypal psychology — particularly in the voices of Hillman and Berry — stages a sustained dialectic between the concrete and the concretistic. Hillman distinguishes a soulful ‘concrete immediacy’ from what he calls ‘soulless concreteness,’ the Saturn-inflected literalism that forecloses psychological depth. Berry refines this further: the concrete as prima materia is indispensable to psychological work, but literalism — taking concrete objects ‘only at face value’ — paradoxically blocks access to the concrete itself by stripping it of metaphorical resonance. Sacks approaches the same paradox clinically, finding in neurological deficit an ‘extraordinarily rich, deep and concrete reality’ that confounds Jacksonian hierarchies. Snell and Simondon contribute genealogical and ontological dimensions, tracing how the abstract noun emerged historically from ‘the figurative use of a concrete noun,’ and how technical operations reveal implicit, topological forms within concrete matter. Taken together, these voices insist that ‘the concrete’ is never self-evident: it is always already contested between immediacy and literalism, soul and matter, image and fact.
We find ourselves entering a realm of fascination and paradox, all of which centres on the ambiguity of the ‘concrete’.
Sacks identifies the concrete as a site of genuine philosophical and clinical paradox, arguing that the loss of abstract capacity may yield an intensified, direct experience of concrete reality rather than mere impoverishment.
, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, 1985thesis
Because our aim is psyche—and psyche has as much to do with matter as with spirit—we can have no quarrel with the concrete as such.
Berry distinguishes the concrete as legitimate prima materia of psychological work from concretism or literalism, which robs concrete objects of their metaphorical, soul-bearing significance.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982thesis
By blindness I mean particularly soulless concreteness… My approach to the material world—even if it is concrete, is not soulless.
Hillman differentiates soulless concreteness, a Saturn-like literalism that kills civilization, from a psychologically animated concrete immediacy that attends to the actual material world without foreclosing depth.
, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis
psyche and concrete nature have merged into a narcissistic state, so that not only am I the world but the world is I, and psyche itself takes on a form as literal as the concrete objects to which it is attached.
Berry describes the pathological merger of psyche with concrete event, in which the discovery of soul in material phenomena immediately collapses back into literalism, dissolving genuine psychological insight.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982thesis
concrete event could be as much an enemy to psychological insight as the common sense of the Philistine was antipathetic to the emergence of spirit.
Berry reads Freud’s insight as establishing that naive reliance on concrete events can obstruct psychological understanding, affiliating the merely concrete with an archetypal Philistine mode of perception.
, Echo’s Subtle Body: Contributions to an Archetypal Psychology, 1982thesis
it is only concrete, sensuously perceived objects or processes that excite sensations for the extravert; those, exclusively, which everyone everywhere would sense as concrete.
Jung defines the extraverted sensation type’s world as constituted entirely by universally perceptible, concrete sensory objects, subordinating all rational functions to their testimony.
, Psychological Types, 1921thesis
for our concretistic thinking, the applied concept of dynamics… its concrete character is in my view aptly expressed by the term ‘libido.’
Jung argues that the term ‘libido’ captures the concrete character of psychic energy without hypostatizing it as a biological drive, distinguishing his usage from Freudian and vitalistic interpretations.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
if the decision is made for a concrete relationship, analysis as such cannot continue… Analysis and a concrete love relationship do not go together.
Jacoby uses ‘concrete’ to mark the threshold between symbolic-analytic work and enacted, literal relationship, arguing that crossing into concrete sexual enactment necessarily terminates the analytic frame.
, The Analytic Encounter: Transference and Human Relationship, 1984supporting
the figurative use of a concrete noun, have as their special area of reference the non-physical—alive, animate, intellectual, dynamic—which ordinarily is not within the reach of the proper or the concrete noun.
Snell traces the historical genesis of abstract nouns from concrete linguistic ancestors, showing that the concrete noun’s domain is the physically bounded and that abstraction required mythical and metaphorical mediation.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting
we have no way of knowing in the individual case whether the analytic predicate is an essential part of the concept or not. One can only attempt to decide this question if one can differentiate in individual cases between a concrete and an abstract concept.
The early Jung identifies the concrete/abstract distinction as a methodological crux in word-association research, noting the difficulty of reliably distinguishing concrete from abstract concepts in individual cases.
, Experimental Researches, 1904supporting
The withering of men and leaves, on the other hand, is no such singular action, but belongs to life itself; it is part of the process of grow
Snell notes that Homer’s leaf-simile is exceptional in invoking a universal process rather than a concrete singular action, illustrating the rarity of genuine abstraction in early Greek poetic thought.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953aside