Psychoanalytic Diagnosis

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

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

Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis (OPD) is a form of multiaxial diagnostic and classification system based on psychodynamic principles, analogous to those based on other principles such as DSM-IV and ICD-10. The OPD is based on five axes: I = experience of illness and prerequisites for treatment, II = interpersonal relations, III = conflict, IV = structure, and V = mental and psychosomatic disorders (in line with Chapter V (F) of the ICD-10). After an initial interview lasting 1–2 hours, the clinician (or researcher) can evaluate the patient’s psychodynamics according to these axes and enter them in the checklists and evaluation forms provided. The new version, OPD-2, has been developed from a purely diagnostic system to include a set of tools and procedures for treatment planning and for measuring change, as well as for determining the appropriate main focuses of treatment and developing appropriate treatment strategies.

Building on the enormous popularity of her two previous texts on diagnosis and case formulation, this important work from Nancy McWilliams completes the trilogy by addressing in detail the art and science of psychodynamic treatment. McWilliams distills the essential principles of clinical practice, including effective listening and talking; transference and countertransference; emotional safety; and an empathic, attuned attitude toward the patient. The author describes the values, assumptions, and clinical and research findings that guide the psychoanalytic enterprise, and shows how to integrate elements of other theoretical perspectives when necessary. She also discusses the phases of treatment and covers such neglected topics as educating the client about the therapeutic process, handling complex challenges to boundaries, and attending to self-care. Presenting complex clinical information in personal, nontechnical language enriched by in-depth clinical vignettes, this is an essential psychoanalytic work and training text for therapists.

Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry: Partners and Competitors in the Mental Health Field offers a comprehensive overview of the many links between the two fields. There have long been connections between the two professions, but this is the first time the many points of contact have been set out clearly for practitioners from both fields. Covering social and cultural factors, clinical practice, including diagnosis and treatment, and looking at teaching and continuing professional development, this book features contributions and exchange of ideas from an international group of clinicians from across both professions. Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry: Partners and Competitors in the Mental Health Field will appeal to all practicing psychoanalysts and psychiatrists and anyone wanting to draw on the best of both fields in their theoretical understanding and clinical practice.

What is Donald Trump’s personality? Is he mentally ill? What in American culture and history enabled him to become president? How does his personality shape his policies and leadership? In this fascinating and highly relevant new book, these questions are answered by a selection of expert contributors, including psychoanalysts, historians, and a sociologist. Narcissism is defined and applied to Donald Trump, his personal history and style of leadership, and the relationship between Trump and his base is explored as a symptom of his needs and the needs of his followers. U.S. culture and U.S. politics are put under the lens, as chapters draw on contemporary academic and journalistic analysis, continuing discussions around gaslighting, demagoguery, and fascism in terms of their validity in application to Trump. Psychoanalytic and Historical Perspectives on the Leadership of Donald Trump refutes many of the mental health experts who label Trump as suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder and makes the case that Trump’s personality combines a marketing and narcissistic orientation that determines his behavior and policies. The authors also assert that to understand Trump’s rise and his followers, it is valuable to combine psychoanalytic, historical, and sociological perspectives. This book will therefore be of great interest to academics in those fields and all those with an interest in contemporary American politics.

This book provides a detailed examination of the historical roots of psychoanalysis from ancient Greece to the late nineteenth century, focusing on social practices that were related to the founders of psychoanalytic theory and maintained within contemporary treatment. Alongside the reconstruction of an evolutionary accumulation of healing practices, the book includes linked discussions of current issues pertaining to psychoanalytic treatment and its working structure as elaborated by Freud and Lacan. There are vital political consequences for psychoanalytic practice - here articulated with an acknowledgement of these practical derivations of early pre-psychoanalytic treatments of the soul. The book demonstrates that these are neither mere techniques nor concepts of the world and the human subject, but they concern the way the problem of power is articulated. The historical establishment of psychoanalytical practice becomes legible through analysis of the traces of the elements of a political ontology, an account of the roots of those traces and the elaboration of the conceptual structure of psychoanalysis as theory and treatment, a praxis which maintains its own distinctive identity.

Combining approaches from literary studies and historical sociology, this book provides a groundbreaking cultural history of the strategies Freud employed in his writings and career to orchestrate public recognition of psychoanalysis and to shape its institutional identity.

What kinds of questions do experienced clinicians ask themselves when meeting a new client for the first time? What are the main issues that must be explored to gain a basic grasp of each individual's unique psychology? How can clinical expertise be taught? From the author of Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, the volume takes clinicians step-by-step through developing a dynamic case formulation and using this information to guide and inform treatment decisions. Synthesizing extensive clinical literature, diverse psychoanalytic viewpoints, and empirical research in psychology and psychiatry, Nancy McWilliams does more than simply bring assessment to life - she illuminates the entire psychotherapeutic process.

Psychoanalytic Practice Today offers the reader a good understanding of the school of thought inspired by the late work of Wilfred R. Bion. The contributors share a belief in the curative power of the analytic encounter and in the capacity of the human mind to develop from the encounter with a mind capable of reverie, dreaming and thinking. The multitude of vignettes presented emphasise the necessity of the emotional involvement of the analyst with his or her patients for improvement to take place. The book is divided in two parts: ‘Psychopathology’ and ‘Emotions and Feelings’. The first part adapts a more classic description of psychiatric disorders by diagnostic criteria, from neuroses to psychoses and including depression and borderline states. The second part of the book takes a closer look at specific clinical manifestations of basic emotions such as anger, surprise, sadness and more complex ones such as jealousy, abandonment and betrayal. The common thread is represented by the central place of dreaming in the psychoanalytic field as a tool to understand these clinical manifestations, and to allow for their psychic representation as an emotional experience. The contributions together offer a varied introduction to current ideas that are growing increasingly interesting to English speaking readers, with a sufficient character of originality, irreverence and creativity that bears witness to the maturity of Italian psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Practice Today will offer new ideas to the practicing psychoanalyst and psychodynamic psychotherapist.

This book provides a complete and fundamental overview, from a psychoanalytical point of view, on theoretical and clinical aspects of psychodynamic or psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It includes the theory of the human mind, psychic development, psychic conflicts, trauma, and dreams.

Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory offers a conceptual map of the most difficult terrain in psychoanalysis as well as a history of its most complex disputes. In exploring the counterpoint between different psychoanalytic traditions, it provides a synthetic perspective that is a major contribution to psychoanalytic thought. The focal point of clinical psychoanalysis has always been the patient’s relationships with others. How do these relationships come about? How do they operate? How are they transformed? How are relationships with others to be understood within the framework of psychoanalytic theory? Jay Greenberg and Stephen Mitchell argue that there have been two basic solutions to the problem of locating relationships within psychoanalytic theory: the drive model, in which relations with others are generated and shaped by the need for drive gratification; and various relational models, in which relationships themselves are taken as primary and irreducible. The authors provide a masterful overview of the history of psychoanalytic ideas, in which they trace the divergences and the interplay between the two models and the intricate strategies adopted by the major theorists in their efforts to position themselves with respect to these models. They demonstrate further that many of the controversies and fashions in diagnosis and psychoanalytic technique can be fully understood only in the context of the dialectic between the drive model and the relational models.

In this pioneering textbook, a master psychoanalyst makes his innovative "field work" teaching technique available to seasoned practitioners and budding students alike. They can, figuratively, sit outside the one-way mirror to watch Dr. Volkan treat patients with neurotic, borderline, and narcissistic personalities, from start to finish, using both modern and classical psychoanalytic techniques. Dr. Volkan not only explains what he is doing while he is doing it, but he also asks and answers the perennial questions so common to analytic work: what am I treating? what do I say? and why does it work? Fascinating and extraordinarily illuminating, Psychoanalytic Technique Expanded is unique in offering an intimate view of updated analytic treatment for an array of disorders. With an engaging narrative style that takes the reader into the depths of analytic work, this textbook can be effectively incorporated into psychiatry and psychology training programs as well as into advanced psychotherapy training programs and beginning technique courses for psychoanalytic candidates.

Normal human development progresses through a process of differentiation and integration, and it is distorted and impeded by the fusion and fragmentation resulting from traumatic experiences. The Impact of Complex Trauma on Development documents the pathological consequences of chronic interpersonal trauma on psychological development, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. It provides an integrative approach to therapy that is based on a rich psychoanalytically-oriented developmental psychology.

The book deals with initial interviews in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, suggesting the idea of special "indicators". These indicators relate to three main areas. Firstly, psychoanalytical understanding of initial interviews to evaluate the patient's suitability for a psychoanalytically based treatment, discussing the dynamics, aims and technique of the interview. Three areas to be explored in the interview are considered: psychopathological data; biographical data, and data arising from the interaction of the patient with the therapist in the interview itself. Secondly, part of the book is devoted to the definition and description of what the author calls "indicators" for the therapist to build a personality profile showing suitability for psychoanalytic treatment. The main theoretical bases of the book are Freud, Klein and Bion. A third part deals with the controversial issue of the differentiation between psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The specificity of psychoanalysis is defined in comparison with psychotherapy. A specific psychoanalytic method and setting may be created as well as a specific psychotherapeutic method and setting.

One hundred years after the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute was established, this book recovers the cultural and intellectual history connected to this vibrant organization and places it alongside the London Bloomsbury group, the Paris Surrealist circle, and the Viennese fin-de-siècle as a crucial chapter in the history of modernism. Taking us from World War I Berlin to the Third Reich and beyond to 1940s Palestine and 1950s New York—and to the influential work of the Frankfurt School—Veronika Fuechtner traces the network of artists and psychoanalysts that began in Germany and continued in exile. Connecting movements, forms, and themes such as Dada, multi-perspectivity, and the urban experience with the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, she illuminates themes distinctive to the Berlin psychoanalytic context such as war trauma, masculinity and femininity, race and anti-Semitism, and the cultural avant-garde. In particular, she explores the lives and works of Alfred Döblin, Max Eitingon, Georg Groddeck, Karen Horney, Richard Huelsenbeck, Count Hermann von Keyserling, Ernst Simmel, and Arnold Zweig.

Few books illuminate a domain of clinical inquiry as superbly as Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Rorschach. Paul Lerner has written a comprehensive text that offers a richly detailed, multidimensional vision of the Rorschach as the ideal medium for operationalizing, testing, and in some instances transforming contemporary clinical theory. For psychoanalytic therapists, the book provides a fascinating overview of how the coevolution of psychoanalytic theory and Rorschach technique has created new possibilities for conceptual integration. Lerner explores recent advances in our ability to operationalize such clinical concepts as splitting, dissociation, and false-self organization. He then reviews how these advances have been applied to research into psychic organization across different diagnostic categories, including anorexia and bulimia, aggressive and psychopathic personality, and schizotypal disorders. Finally, Lerner shows how the resulting data offer a unique vantage point from which to clarify such critical topics as developmental object relations and the structure of primitive experience. Rorschach scholars will appreciate Lerner's informed discussions of theorists as diverse as Rapaport and Schachtel, Exner and Mayman, Schafer and Leichtman. Rorschach students, for their part, will find the book an unusually lucid introduction to test administration, scoring, interpretation, and report writing. Even here, however, Lerner's breadth and originality are apparent, for his exposition of these testing fundamentals incorporates fresh discussions of the nature of the Rorschach test, the impact of the patient-examiner relationship, and the value of the test in treatment planning. Timely, definitive, and uniquely integrative, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Rorschach will be valued by students, clinicians, and researchers well into the next century.

Shortly before and during World War II many European psychoanalysts found refuge in South America, concentrated in Buenos Aires. Here, together with local professionals, they created a strong, creative and productive psychoanalytic movement that in turn gave birth to theoretical and clinical contributions that transformed psychoanalysis, psychology, medicine and culture in South America. The Pioneers of Psychoanalysis in South America is a collection of those pioneers’ papers, and introduces the reader to a body of ideas and advancements, many of which have had limited and piecemeal exposure within the psychoanalytic community in the rest of the world until now. The editors Nydia Lisman-Pieczanski and Alberto Pieczanski present original papers and essays, many of which have never before been published in English; those that have been translated were rarely presented in context. Each one of the chapters is accompanied by a scholarly introduction written by psychoanalysts, many of whom personally knew the pioneers and their oeuvres in depth, tracing the roots of their ideas in the European analytic schools. The Pioneers of Psychoanalysis in South America is divided into six main sections: Psychoanalytic process Psychoanalytic technique Metapsychology Psychoanalysis of children Culture and society Psychosomatic medicine. Nydia Lisman-Pieczanski and Alberto Pieczanski provide a coherent guide to the seminal ideas and practices of the South American psychoanalysts who have made major theoretical and clinical contributions to the advancement of the psychoanalytic discipline. The chapters present the material in a way that is accessible to psychoanalysts from across the globe and will enable them to incorporate the ideas and practices outlined here into their everyday psychoanalytic work. It will also be of interest to psychoanalytic psychotherapists, academics interested in the history and development of psychoanalytic ideas and psychoanalysis, and advanced students. The following link leads to an video interview featuring Nydia Lisman-Pieczanski and Alberto Pieczanski by the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis for the History Project, where they open up about their stories, their marriage, and their new book: https://www.routledge.com/posts/8996

Drawing on deep reserves of experience and theoretical and research knowledge, Nancy McWilliams presents a fresh perspective on psychodynamic supervision in this highly instructive work. McWilliams examines the role of the supervisor in developing the therapist's clinical skills, giving support, helping to formulate and monitor treatment goals, and providing input on ethical dilemmas. Filled with candid clinical examples, the book addresses both individual and group supervision. Special attention is given to navigating personality dynamics, power imbalances, and various dimensions of diversity in the supervisory dyad. McWilliams guides mentors and mentees alike to optimize this unique relationship as a resource for lifelong professional learning and growth.