Psychoanalytic Diagnosis

Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process

By: Nancy McWilliams PhD

Narrated by: Allison Posner

Length: 19 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

This acclaimed clinical guide and widely adopted text has filled a key need in the field since its original publication. Nancy McWilliams makes psychoanalytic personality theory and its implications for practice accessible to practitioners of all levels of experience. She explains major character types and demonstrates specific ways that understanding the patient's individual personality structure can influence the therapist's focus and style of intervention. Guidelines are provided for developing a systematic yet flexible diagnostic formulation and using it to inform treatment. A wealth of illustrative clinical examples are featured.

Winner—Canadian Psychological Association's Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2011 The Guilford Press (P)2024 The Guilford Press

Critic reviews

"This is a book for all clinicians who aspire to understand their clients deeply and help them live more richly and authentically. McWilliams synthesizes a century of cumulative clinical wisdom and offers it in a form that is accessible and useful to clinicians of any theoretical persuasion. The first edition of Psychoanalytic Diagnosis was an instant classic; the second edition is exceptionally lucid and masterful. This is McWilliams, master clinician and teacher, at her very best."—Jonathan Shedler, PhD, Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine

"In revising Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, McWilliams has surpassed herself. The original—deservedly regarded as a classic—was an integrative tour de force; the second edition is even better. Informed by current advances in neuroscience and infant research, and reshaped in light of the 'relational turn' in contemporary psychoanalysis, this book distills a vast literature on development, psychopathology, and therapy into an extraordinarily useful map of the clinical terrain. It is at once an indispensable resource for beginning therapists, a valuable teaching tool, and a comprehensive reference for seasoned clinicians."—David J. Wallin, PhD, private practice, Mill Valley and Albany, California

"In this accessible and impassioned book, McWilliams provides organizing principles to help us understand psychopathology without oversimplifying or evading the difficult questions raised by diagnosis. Reading McWilliams's book will make you feel like you know her. Her extraordinary humanity, wisdom, deep sense of ethics, and steady concern for her patients are evident throughout. The second edition includes an updated presentation of attachment theory, addresses the contributions of relational theory and neuroscience research, and integrates a contemporary understanding of somatization and defense. A 'must read' for every clinician in training."—Joyce A. Slochower, PhD, Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, New York University