The following is an unpublished letter to the editor of the New York Times by Stephen Rittenberg and Herbert Wyman
To The Editor:
As psychoanalytic colleagues of the late Charles Brenner, and as founding Editors of the Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis, we applaud the accuracy with which the obituary described Dr. Brenner’s work and the impact it had on our field. At the same time we must observe that the obituary was grotesquely inaccurate in its descriptions of Charlie Brenner as a “ruthless” “relentless” “dismissive” “intransigent purist.” We speak both from personal experience of Charlie’s warmth and generosity, and from our professional experience of the way he welcomed reasoned criticism. The statement which we found especially wrongheaded was that there was “a limit to the extent to which his thinking evolved” and that this limitation contributed to the decline of psychoanalysis. The opposite is true. The only “limitation” to Charlie’s thinking was his unwillingness to abandon scientific thinking in favor of fashionable cant. Charlie’s thinking evolved continuously throughout his long life: Just one month before his death he presented a paper in which he further developed the new ideas which have in fact revivified psychoanalysis and will contribute to its evolution throughout the 21st century.
Sincerely,
Stephen M Rittenberg MD
Herbert M Wyman MD