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As the first American psychoanalyst, Brill was deeply esteemed as the teacher of two generations of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. First to bring Freud's monumental discoveries to this country—and by his translations of Freud's major works to the English-speaking world—Brill's place in the history of twentieth century psychiatry has been fully acknowledged here and abroad. At seventy-two, he dedicated his Lectures on Psychoanalytic Psychiatry1 'to the State Hospital Physicians who bear the brunt of curing and alleviating mental ailments; in whose ranks I served and to whom these lectures were first addressed.' He continued to serve in the 'ranks' until his death, March 2, 1948.
I have counted it a privilege to be one of his many students. I listened to his lectures on numerous occasions and when I first began the study of psychoanalysis it was Brill who functioned as my 'psychoanalytic institute' because there were no organized and well-staffed psychoanalytic institutes as there are today.
A. A. Brill had a special talent for conveying to the reader of his works, and to the listener of his lectures or informal talks, the distilled essence of an impressive accumulation of sound observations in the science of the mind. He was a profound scholar and his clinical presentations were always alive and brilliantly interlaced with a critical digest of the heterogenous storehouse of psychiatric and psychoanalytic literature.
At the beginning of this century, American psychiatry was slowly emerging from its barrenness. The psychiatric curriculum in the best medical schools consisted of about a dozen lectures and demonstrations of mental diseases. The young physicians were either overawed by the mysteries of the mentally sick, or repelled by the chronic 'dementias' which frightened