Charles Brenner (1914–2008) was an American psychoanalyst who served as President of the New York Psychoanalytic Society & is perhaps best known for his contributions to drive theory, the structure of the mind & conflict theory.
Called 'the intransigent purist of American psychoanalyis', he was 'the author of a forbidding Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis &, with Jacob Arlow, of Psychoanalytic Concepts & the Structural Theory, a once controversial, now standard advanced text'. Eric Berne considered that on the question 'What is psychoanalysis? Two of the best books...are An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis, by Charles Brenner, & Freud's Outline of Psychoanalysis'. Brenner himself acknowledged that probably 'my most significant influence was as author of An Elementary Textbook.'