Nancy McWilliams

Nancy McWilliams is an American psychologist who is emerita visiting professor at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University. She has written on personality and psychotherapy.

McWilliams is a psychoanalytic/dynamic author, teacher, supervisor, and therapist. She has a private practice in psychotherapy and supervision in Lambertville, New Jersey. She is a former president of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association (APA). 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.

Psychoanalytic Diagnosis McWilliams' 1994 book Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, published in a second edition in 2011, is considered by psychoanalysts and psychodynamic psychotherapists to be a classic text on the diagnosis of patients within these theoretical frameworks. It was described by Otto F. Kernberg as serving an "essential function" in educating about a psychoanalytic understanding of personality and personality disorders.

The book criticizes the approach to diagnosis widely adopted in the United States following the publication of the DSM-III in 1980, and dissociative psychologies, which relate to various psychological phenomena, including derealization, depersonalization, the associated depersonalization–derealization disorder, and in extreme cases, dissociative identity disorder.

These personalities are described in terms of their underlying defense mechanisms, of which the book outlines ten "primary defensive processes" and another fifteen "secondary defensive processes". (BPO), which is distinct from what is now usually called borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Publications McWilliams is the author of several books on psychoanalysis, personality and psychotherapy:

First edition published in 1994.

She is also Associate Editor of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, first published in 2006, and published in a second edition (PDM-2) in 2017 and recently a third edition in 2025.

Awards Awards include the Gradiva Prize for her second and fourth books, the Rosalee Weiss award for contributions to practice, the Division of Psychoanalysis awards for leadership (2005), scholarship (2012), and international academic excellence (2021), the Laughlin distinguished teacher award, the Goethe Scholarship award, and the Hans Strupp award for teaching, practice and writing.