Psychoanalytic Diagnosis; by Nancy McWilliams;  Guilford Press, New York, 2011, second edition;  426 pp; $60.00

This new, significantly enriched and updated edition of Nancy McWilliams's classic text is an important contribution to psychoanalytic literature. It outlines the application of psychoanalytic findings to character formation and personality disorders, the diagnostic evaluation of personality structure and its implications for treatment indications, and the therapeutic implications of the defensive organization of different personality disorders. It is essential reading for psychoanalytic psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals in a broad sense, and, for the psychoanalyst, it provides an impressive, updated history of the crucial contributions that psychoanalysis has been making in all these fields.

Part One of the book is structured in terms of the underlying theoretical assumptions and main psychoanalytic findings that underlie the proposed description of the types of character organization that follow in the second part. These conceptual issues include an excellent discussion of why diagnosis is important in psychoanalytic treatment and psychoanalytic-oriented psychotherapies, and the general theoretic psychoanalytic orientations that influence the diagnosis of character. There are several chapters dealing with psychological development in terms of the severity of personality disorders, and the constellations of primary and secondary defensive processes that correspond, respectively, to the most severe and less severe personality disorders.

Part Two describes each of the most important personality disorders: antisocial, narcissistic, schizoid, paranoid, depressive and manic, masochistic, obsessive-compulsive, hysterical, and dissociative personality disorders, their predominantly impulsive and defensive features, the respective organizational aspects of self and relations to significant others, transference and