Discussion

By the time my education in psychiatry began, which was in 1954, Brenner was already poised to be the towering national and international figure he has since become. A year later, his elementary textbook on psychoanalysis emerged with a clarity and brilliance which has characterized his writings ever since, and became for me a chief reference point for informing my newly developing psychoanalytic understanding before my formal training ever began. But as my official psychoanalytic training was in an institute led and inspired by Ralph Greenson and Leo Rangell, Brenner's ideas, which indeed remained in the forefront nationally, were held up in our group for criticism and for the sake of contrast, as often as they were used for clinical direction and for the sake of psychoanalytic understanding they offered. I had already graduated from analytic training in 1964 when Brenner and Arlow published their declaration that has guided classical psychoanalytic education ever since, that the tripartite model is to be taken as the supreme model for theory and practice. This book, like all else Brenner has written, including his monumental Mind in Conflict (1982), is informed by a deep conviction that his own vision is clear and his own commitment unwavering. The crisp precision of his prose, the clean logic of his formulation, is promoted by that very quality of trust he has in his own vision and the certainty he holds about his own commitment. This quality is persuasive to many, infuriating to some, and always promotes an elegant model for psychoanalytic education. I myself have never taught a course in psychoanalytic technique that did not include Brenner's writing, and