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Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process

by Nancy McWilliams

Personality structure as a guide to clinical practice

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Awards & Recognition

  • Award recognition

    Winner of the Canadian Psychological Association’s Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship

    Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship

AlbakiReads Editorial

Personality structure as a guide to clinical practice

Nancy McWilliams connects psychoanalytic personality theory with decisions made in therapy, explaining how patients’ personality structures can shape a clinician’s focus and interventions. The guide also presents a method for building diagnostic formulations that are systematic while remaining flexible. Clinical examples illustrate the concepts, and this second edition incorporates material on attachment theory, neuroscience, trauma, and the contemporary relational movement in psychoanalysis. Together, its topics frame diagnosis not simply as classification but as information that can help organize treatment.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Psychotherapists and clinicians seeking a psychoanalytic framework for understanding personality.
  • Students or practitioners interested in diagnostic formulation and its role in treatment planning.
  • Readers studying psychoanalytic perspectives alongside attachment, neuroscience, or trauma.

Themes

Psychoanalytic personality theoryClinical diagnosis and formulationTreatment planningAttachment, neuroscience, and traumaRelational psychoanalysis

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

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. Highly readable, the book features a wealth of illustrative clinical examples.

New to This Edition

  • Reflects the ongoing development of the author's approach over nearly two decades.
  • Incorporates important advances in attachment theory, neuroscience, and the study of trauma.
  • Coverage of the contemporary relational movement in psychoanalysis.
Winner--Canadian Psychological Association's Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship
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