Product Description
This is the first text to come along in many years that makes psychoanalytic personality theory and its implications for practice accessible to beginning practitioners. The last book of its kind, which was published more than 20 years ago, predated the development of such significant concepts as borderline syndromes, narcissistic pathology, dissociative disorders and self-defeating personality.
Contemporary students often react with bewilderment to the language of pioneering analysts like Reich and Fenichel and, since 1980, the various volumes of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) have reflected an empirical-descriptive orientation that deliberately eschews psychodynamic assumptions. Consequently, today's therapist in training may have little exposure to the rich clinical and theoretical history behind each disorder mentioned in DSM; to psychoanalytic expertise with widely recognized character patterns not mentioned in DSM, such as depressive and hypomanic psychologies, high-functioning schizoid personalities, and hysterical personalities; or to a comprehensive, theoretically sophisticated rationale that links assessment to treatment.
Filling the need for a text that clearly lays out the conceptual heritage that psychoanalytic practitioners take for granted, this important new volume explicates the major clinically important character types and suggests how an appreciation of the patients' individual personality structure should influence the therapist's focus and style of intervention. Dispensing with the dense jargon that often discourages people from learning, Nancy McWilliams writes in a lucid, personal manner that demystifies psychodynamic theory and practice. Innumerable clinical vignettes are presented with humor, candor, and compassion, bringing abstract concepts to life.
Comprehensive in scope, Psychoanalytic Diagnosis will be valued by seasoned clinicians and students alike. Psychodynamically oriented readers will find it an excellent introduction to psychoanalytic diagnostic thinking. For those identified with other approaches, it will foster psychoanalytic literacy, providing them with the capacity to better understand the approaches of their analytically oriented colleagues.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 16 reviews)

Straightforward solutions

This is an intelligent, practical and honest resource. It is not full of wordy, mind-numbing explanations like many other psychodynamic texts. Definitely would recommend.
August 24, 2008

Excellent book

Highly recommended for anyone interested in personality or clinical psychology. Nancy McWilliams is a fantastic writer and makes quite complex concepts very accessible and easily understandable. I also appreciate the compassion with which she discusses personality disordered individuals.
June 04, 2007

Accessible Freud

This book is required reading for my graduate studies, but after having read Brenner to get the complexities of Freud's theories, it is quite refreshing. The book is well organized, and it doesn't drown in academic language. It is fairly easy to understand, which makes it possible to put all of the components of psycho-dynamics together to make sense. I would reccommend this to anyone who wants to understand the origin of psycho-analysis, or to anyone who just is curious about Freud and how he influenced our world through his ground breaking theories.
March 08, 2007

Not just for the psychodynamically inclined.

With clarity of expression, humanity and imagination, McWilliams has written a classic exposition of psychodiagnosis from the dynamic framework. However, this book will be read for years to come by clinicians seeking to understand symptoms and behavior in the context of the personality of the person exhibiting these symptoms or behavior, and not just clinicians who are psychodynamically oriented. I run a psychology doctoral training program and suggest this book to all of my students. Understanding the concepts herein will have great impact on the clinical work of any serious therapist.
March 05, 2007

A New Level of Understanding

Briefly, this book has given me a new level of understanding of my clients -- sadly one I never got in my cognitive-behavioral oriented graduate school. There is a richness and depth that, in my experience, is astonishing to find in one author. E.g., I had little clue to what goes on in the mind and heart of someone with a diagnosis antisocial/psychopathic personality, or how one could reach such an individual. The book speaks of inner conflicts, defenses, transference and countertransference and therapeutic strategies in such a manner that one has a coherent understanding at a new level of depth.
November 12, 2006

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