Nancy McWilliams Ph.D., ABPP. | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1945 (age 80–81) |
| Notable work | |
| Scientific career | |
| Alma mater | Oberlin College,Brooklyn College,Rutgers University |
| Fields | Psychoanalysis,Psychotherapy,Personality |
| Institutions | Rutgers University |
| Website | https://nancymcwilliams.com |
Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D., ABPP., is emerita visiting professor at theGraduate School ofApplied andProfessional Psychology atRutgers University.[1] She has written onpersonality andpsychotherapy.[2][3][4]
McWilliams is a psychoanalytic/dynamic author, teacher, supervisor, and therapist. She has a private practice in psychotherapy and supervision inLambertville, New Jersey.[5]: 6 She is a former president of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of theAmerican Psychological Association (APA).[5]: 6
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Born in 1945 in Abington, Pennsylvania, she grew up inLongmeadow, Massachusetts,New Canaan, Connecticut, andWyomissing, Pennsylvania. She graduated fromOberlin College in 1967, with honors in Political Science. Subsequently, she studied psychology atBrooklyn College and then received her Master's and Doctoral degrees from Rutgers University in Psychology (Personality and Social). In 1978 she was licensed as an independent psychologist in New Jersey and also graduated from the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis in New York. Since 2010, she has been Board Certified in Psychoanalysis in Psychology.
In 2011, the American Psychological Association chose her to represent psychoanalytic therapy in the remake of the classic film,Three Approaches to Psychotherapy. In 2015, she was asked to be the plenary speaker at the American Psychological Association convention in Toronto, Canada. She is a member of the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey and an Honorary Member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Moscow Psychoanalytic Society, the Institute for Psychoanalytic Therapy in Turin, Italy, and the Warsaw Scientific Association for Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. She has given graduation addresses at the Smith College School for Social Work and theYale University School of Medicine. In the summer of 2016 she was the Erikson Scholar at the Austen Riggs Center inStockbridge, Massachusetts. In 2016, she taught a course on "The Minister and Mental Health" at Princeton Theological Seminary. Her writings have been translated into 20 languages,[6] and she has taught in 30 countries.
Her areas of specialty include psychoanalytic theories, individual differences, personality, the relationship between psychological diagnosis and treatment, alternatives to DSM diagnostic conventions, integration of feminist theory and psychoanalytic knowledge, and the application of psychoanalytic understanding to the problems of diverse clinical populations.
McWilliams' 1994 bookPsychoanalytic Diagnosis, published in a second edition in 2011, is considered bypsychoanalysts andpsychodynamic psychotherapists to be a classic text on the diagnosis of patients within these theoretical frameworks.[7] It was described byOtto F. Kernberg as serving an "essential function" in educating about a psychoanalytic understanding of personality and personality disorders.[8]
The book criticizes the approach to diagnosis widely adopted in the United States following the publication of theDSM-III in 1980,[5] and instead attempts to develop an alternative approach that mixes elements of classicaldrive theory,object relations theory,ego psychology,neurobiology,attachment theory, and modernpsychodynamic theory in general, often taking a relational perspective.[7][8] It relates these theoretical considerations to their implications for the practice ofpsychotherapy.
In contrast to thePsychodynamic Diagnostic Manual,Psychoanalytic Diagnosis is focused chiefly onpersonality, and in particularpersonality disorders. While the book takes an eclectic approach,[7] it does propose a specific diagnostic framework containing nine distinct "types of character organization", namely:[5]
These personalities are described in terms of their underlyingdefense mechanisms, of which the book outlines ten "primary defensive processes" and another fifteen "secondary defensive processes".[5]
Additionally, the book identifies a spectrum of developmental levels of organization, which is partitioned into three sections, namely theneurotic, borderline andpsychotic ranges of functioning.[5] Here, "borderline" is used in the sense of Otto Kernberg's borderline personality organization[10] (BPO), which is distinct from what is now usually called borderline personality disorder (BPD).
McWilliams is the author of several books onpsychoanalysis, personality and psychotherapy:
She is also Associate Editor of thePsychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, first published in 2006,[11] and published in a second edition (PDM-2) in 2017:
Awards include the Gradiva Prize for her second[12] and fourth[13] books, the Rosalee Weiss award for contributions to practice,[14] the Division of Psychoanalysis awards for leadership (2005),[15] scholarship (2012),[15] and international academic excellence (2021), the Laughlin distinguished teacher award, the Goethe Scholarship award, and the Hans Strupp award for teaching, practice and writing.
