Nancy McWilliams is Visiting Professor Emerita at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology and has a private practice in Lambertville, NJ. She is author of Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (1994; rev. ed. 2011), Psychoanalytic Case Formulation (1999), Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (2004), and Psychoanalytic Supervision(2021), all with Guilford Press. She has edited, co-authored, or contributed to several other books, and is Associate Editor of all three editions of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (2006, Lingiardi & McWilliams, 2017, 2026). With Jeff Fine-Thomas, she co-authored the forthcoming book Expanding Your Clinical Repertoire: Psychoanalytic Ideas You Can Use to Help Patients.
Dr. McWilliams is a former president of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association and a founder and board member of Academics for the Advancement of Psychodynamic Psychology (A2P2). She is on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Psychology and is a peer reviewer for the journal Psychosis. A graduate of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, she is also affiliated with the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey. She is on the Board of Trustees of the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA, and is a Psychological Humanities Fellow at the Boston College Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics.
Awards include two Gradiva prizes (1999 and 2021), the Goethe Scholarship Award (2012), the Rosalee Weiss award for contributions to practice (2004), the Laughlin distinguished teacher award (2007), the Hans Strupp Award for teaching, practice and writing (2014), and the Division 39 Leadership (2005), Scholarship (2012), International (2020) and Founder (2026) awards. She has given commencement addresses for the Yale University School of Medicine and the Smith College School for Social Work. The American Psychological Association chose her to represent psychoanalytic therapy in a 2011 remake of the classic film, “Three Approaches to Psychotherapy,” and chose her as a plenary speaker for the 2015 APA convention in Toronto.
Dr. McWilliams is an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of Turin, Italy, and the Warsaw Scientific Association for Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. She has taught in person or remotely in over 50 countries, and her writings have been translated into 20 languages.
Areas of Specialty
Dr. McWilliams specializes in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and supervision; the relationship between diagnosis and treatment; alternatives to DSM and ICD diagnostic conventions; integration of feminist theory and psychoanalytic knowledge; the application of psychoanalytic understanding to the problems of diverse clinical populations; altruism; narcissism; and trauma and dissociative disorders.
