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Those of us who are grateful to Charles Brenner for his Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis,1 who have followed his many papers and have been privileged to hear his discussions, can easily identify his hallmarks in this book: directness, clarity, demystification, and a deceptive simplicity which can be easily misunderstood.
The present book describes a variety of theoretical guides to technique in the psychoanalytic approach to the multitudinous expressions and derivatives of psychic conflict. For Brenner, psychic conflict as discussed here is largely intersystemic conflict. Important considerations regarding intrasystemic conflict, particularly unintegrated ego phenomena and a view of the superego and ego ideal as structurally complex, are apparently not within the author's frame of reference in this particular work.
Brenner skillfully utilizes familiar and basic components of analysis, such as responses to lateness, analyst's errors, free association, dreams, symptoms, the use of the couch, and the like, to illustrate his position that the major contribution of the analyst is the imparting