“Realizations Prevented From Emerging:
Concretization In The Analytic Field"
Caron Harrang, LICSW, FIPA, BCPsa
In this presentation, Caron Harrang explores how psychoanalytic theory—when relied upon too rigidly or defensively—can inadvertently become concretized within the analytic field, foreclosing the emergence of new thoughts and realizations. Drawing on Bionian and post-Bionian field theory, Harrang examines oscillations between concrete and metaphorical thinking as a normal and vital feature of psychic life, and considers how these movements can become arrested in times of clinical turbulence. Through vivid clinical vignettes, she illustrates how an analyst’s premature recourse to theory may function as a retreat from uncertainty, disrupting reverie and a co-dreaming atmosphere of the analytic group of two.
Harrang advocates for a hermeneutic clinical stance that holds theory lightly—as metaphor rather than explanation—allowing lived emotional experience to remain foreground. Her presentation invites participants to reflect on their own relationships to psychoanalytic theory, uncertainty, and negative capability in analytic work, particularly at moments when emotional intensity presses for closure rather than openness.
This paper was recently published in German as Erkenntnisse, die nicht zutage treten dürfen: Konkretisierungen im analytischen Feld in the Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse. This scientific meeting marks its first presentation to an English-speaking audience.
Learning Objectives
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Participants will be able to identify forms of pathological concretization in the analytic field and distinguish them from healthy oscillations between concrete and metaphorical thinking.
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Participants will deepen their capacity to reflect on how theoretical certainty may function defensively in moments of clinical uncertainty or emotional turbulence.
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Participants will gain clinical tools for cultivating a more flexible, hermeneutic stance that supports reverie, co-dreaming, and the emergence of new realizations in analytic work.
About the Presenter
Caron Harrang, LICSW, FIPA, BCPsa is a board-certified psychoanalyst with a full-time private practice in Seattle, Washington. She is an IPA training and supervising psychoanalyst on the faculty of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and teaches throughout North America. Her recent publications include co-editor and chapter author of the Gradiva Award–winning Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (2021); “Introduction. Truth and Lies: Psychoanalytic Perspectives” (2023); “On Grotstein’s ‘Truth’ in Bion’s Theory of ‘O’” (2023); Nancy C. Winters, Caron Harrang, and Stefanie Sedlacek, “Transformations in O Online: Group Process in the Virtual Realm” (2024); “Earthquakes in the Analytic Field: A Post-Bionian View of Negative Therapeutic Reaction” (2025); and “Binocular Vision as a Function of the Analytic Field” (in press). For additional information, see www.caronharrang.com.
About the Moderator
Drew Tillotson, PsyD, FIPA, BCPsa is a board-certified psychoanalyst in San Francisco, California. He is a graduate, Training and Supervising Analyst, faculty member, and Past President of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC), and also serves as a Training and Supervising Analyst on the faculty of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NPSI). He is Past Vice-President of the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation and currently a board director for both the Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies and the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation. He teaches at PINC and NPSI and maintains a full-time private practice in San Francisco. Recent publications include co-editor and chapter author of the Gradiva Award–winning Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (2021); chapter author in Braving the Erotic Field in the Treatment of Adolescents and Children (2022); and contributions to Jonathan Sklar’s The Soft Power of Culture: Art, Transitional Space, Death and Play (2024).
