Introduction: The Contributions of Charles Brenner, M.D.: Psychoanalysis Rebooted

Charles Brenner needs no introduction to readers of this Journal. We suspect that few of our readers have not been directly influenced by his work.

It is difficult for us, the generation of Dr. Brenner's contemporaries, to put in perspective the work of someone who has thought deeply upon virtually every aspect of psychoanalysis. Perhaps only the future will provide such a perspective on a man who has been described by one contemporary as the smartest analyst who ever lived. For now, it seems to us that Dr. Brenner has produced a creative resynthesis, remarkable in its scope. By taking psychoanalysis back to its origins in the concepts of conflict and compromise formation he has reworked psychoanalytic theory from the ground up, thereby breathing new life into the field and leading it out of the blind alleys of remote abstraction toward which it was heading when he began his work.

In effect what Dr. Brenner has done for psychoanalysis may be compared to the function of “rebooting” in the field of computer science. Psychoanalytic theorists and computer scientists will have had the common experience of “getting stuck,” with one's work leading into a blind alley from which there is no apparent exit. In psychoanalysis this would correspond roughly to the period of the 1950s and 1960s when theory seemed unable to progress. In computer work, “getting stuck” may be an everyday experience: suddenly the program can go no further yet no exit or alternative pathway seems possible. At that point there is a rescue procedure available to the computer operator: “rebooting.” This procedure, by shutting down and restarting the computer, extricates the operator from the stalled program and enables him to start work afresh.

It seems to us that by exiting the theoretical “programs” of the 1950s and returning to the original core concepts of psychoanalysis, Dr. Brenner has quite effectively rebooted our field. He has gone on