Do you mean that a pattern is an abstraction with a name?
A pattern is a physical thing in the world, there whether we see it or not. When we notice it (forming an image of it in our own minds) and name it (assigning its image a single token to be related to other such images, and maybe shared) it becomes an abstraction. The abstraction depends on the pattern, not the other way around.
Ah, I thought you meant pattern as in a "design pattern". I suppose that makes sense. The difficult part is knowing what patterns to name, how to name them, and what to apply them to.
