THE PROBLEM OF CONCRETENESS

''Concrete'' patients manifest resistance to interpretation per se. Th eir apparently primitive thinking is the result of complex psychodynam ics, explicable in terms of the mechanisms of wish fulfillment and a r evised theory of fetishism. The general thesis is that an unconscious equation of differentiation with overwhelming tension lends to a globa l process of defense against the differentiating function of the analy tic frame. The wider implications of this theory can be integrated wit h Freud's mostly unknown late attempt to generalize the theory of feti shism.