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This volume of papers, a tribute to Charles Brenner's impressive contribution to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, is itself a significant addition to our literature. The authors of the essays included in it all share Brenner's fundamental perspective that psychoanalysis is indeed a science of mental conflict, and they also support his insistence that what is most coherent and clarifying in psychoanalytic theory has been derived from data that are available only in the psychoanalytic situation. Throughout his analytic career, Brenner has confronted issues with an unwavering commitment to what he has perceived as the essential elements in the psychoanalytic view of human mental function. He has examined and questioned hypothetical perspectives and technical precepts, whether traditional or recently proposed, with regard to their source in dependable analytic data and the nature of their relationship to other concepts.
Brenner has not attempted to construct an apparently seamless body of Freudian analytic theory by somehow accommodating all of Freud's hypotheses and speculations. In fact, his firm conviction about and support for the truly nuclear ideas of Freudian psychoanalysis, as distinguished from the provisional and marginal hypotheses, has enabled him to demonstrate persuasively instances of Freud's own lapses and conceptual inconsistencies. He has thus frequently revealed the greater power and validity of certain long-held analytic concepts precisely by freeing them from their original and rather weak formulations based on doubtful biological assumptions.
Brenner, along with Arlow, is generally identified as the spokesman for and advocate of the importance of the structural point of view in psychoanalysis. It must be remarked, however, that he has just as forcefully reminded us of the vital importance of the dynamic point of view and of its perspective that mental functioning and all human behavior represent unceasing conflictful interaction