Afterburn (psychotherapy) Afterburn (psychotherapy) Afterburn is a psychological term coined by Eric Berne, who defined it as "the period of time before a past event is assimilated". Eric Berne, the founding father of transactional analysis, used the term "afterburn" to indicate the effect an atypical past event continues to exert on a person's daily schedule, activities and mental state even "after" it is over: to "those occasions when it disturbs normal patterns for an appreciable period, rather than being assimilated into them or excluded from them by repression and other psychological mechanisms". For Berne, afterburn is the flip side of reachback, which
Charles Brenner (psychiatrist) Charles Brenner (psychiatrist) Charles Brenner (18 November 1913, in Boston – 19 May 2008) was an American psychoanalyst who served as President of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, and is perhaps best known for his contributions to drive theory, the structure of the mind, and conflict theory. He was for half a century an exemplary figure for psychoanalysis in America, being termed by Janet Malcolm “the intransigent purist of American psychoanalysis”. Brenner first made his name as the author of a so-called "Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis", which Eric Berne paired with Freud's "Outline of Psychoanalysis" as the best guide to