Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process

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About Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality

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. Review "Books by Nancy McWilliams used in unison make the best psychodynamic resources I have yet encountered in more than 60 years in the field."--Robert C. Lane, PhD, Department of Psychology, Nova Southeastern University "The aim of Nancy McWilliams's excellent (and I believe essential) book is twofold: first, to present a psychoanalytically oriented view of individual differences in personality structure and then, secondly, to show how these differences can be clinically and therapeutically useful....Stylistically, the writing is clear and simple and jargon is, for the most part, avoided. The case examples and anecdotes, especially those illustrating the different personality types, are well-chosen and illuminating." --Scott Miller, Ph.D. in New Jersey Psychologist "A successful attempt to bring together the many strands of contemporary psychoanalytic investigation of the nature and psychotherapeutic treatment of character pathology. Readable and informative, this book moves easily from one theoretical frame to another according to the usefulness of each frame for understanding a specific aspect of the character pathology....The result is a book that should be helpful to the psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapist of personality disorders as well as to the clinician in carrying out the differential diagnosis of these conditions....The thoughtful references, at crucial points, to literature that permits the reader to deepen his or her understanding in this field enriches and broadens the perspective opened by this excellent primer." --Otto F. Kernberg, M.D. "Comprehensible and readable--lends itself to graduate studies." --Cathleen Adams, Ph.D., New School for Social Research, Gradu