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In Making Freud More Freudian, Arnold Rothstein demonstrates the clinical value of Charles Brenner's theoretical contributions to psychoanalysis. For over fifty years, Brenner worked to make Freud more Freudian by clarifying and elaborating Freud's fundamental concepts that have had enduring value. Ultimately, he discarded what he considered Freud's misguided structural model of the mind, with its three agencies of id, ego, and superego.
Rothstein asserts that Brenner's work might be seen as revolutionary in its rejection of the structural model, but it is evolutionary in the sense that he maintained the essential elements of Freudian theory. Perhaps Brenner's most significant contribution was his elaboration of Freud's concept of compromise formation, which originally referred to two psychic elements, a drive and a defense, resulting in a symptom. Brenner broadened the concept to include interacting drive derivatives, anxiety and/or depressive affect, defenses, and superego elements. Rothstein has elaborated Brenner's insights about compromise formation and its clinical application in seven published papers. This book, divided into two parts, “Theoretical Considerations” andClinical Considerations,” is a compilation of these important articles.
The first chapter offers a valuable and concentrated review of the evolution of post-Freudian thought. Rothstein outlines the fundamental constructs of Freud's evolving theory and then discusses three areas of Freud's writings that are confusing and “anti-Freudian” in that they may be used “in the service of resistance to appreciating the ubiquitous and interminable influence of unconscious conflict on all human thought and activity” (p. x). These areas are Freud's biological theories of motivation, the distinctions between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, and the concept of the repetition compulsion that is beyond the pleasure principle.
Rothstein hypothesizes that Freud's need for a biological drive theory ar