Diana Diamond PhD Bio

Diana Diamond is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and professor of Psychology. After receiving her BA from Wesleyan University in English and Anthropology, she earned her master’s in English and Women’s Studies and her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She completed three years of clinical and research postdoctoral training at Yale University School of Medicine and earned a certificate in psychoanalysis at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, where she is currently on the faculty.

She is Professor Emeritus in the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at the City University of New York (CUNY) and is Senior Fellow at the Personality Disorders Institute (PDI) at Weill Cornell Medical College. With her colleagues at the PDI, she has helped develop Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP), an evidence-based psychodynamic approach to treating borderline patients, which has recently been adapted to treating patients with narcissistic personality disorder and pathological narcissism. TFP is now taught and practiced internationally. At the PDI, she has also conducted research investigating the impact of narcissistic pathology on the treatment process and outcome for patients in TFP. She is the primary author of Treating Pathological Narcissism with Transference Focused Psychotherapy (Guilford Press, 2021) and has published and lectured internationally in the areas of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with personality disorders, attachment and mentalization, mental representation, gender and sexuality, and the application of psychoanalytic concepts to understanding narrative and symbolism in cinema. Her co-edited book, Cinematic Reflections on the Legacy of the Holocaust: Psychoanalytic Perspective (Taylor and Francis, Routledge), was published in 2018.

She is an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and has received several awards for her research and clinical papers from the American Psychological Association (Division 39) and the American Psychoanalytic Association. She is also the recipient of the Alumni Award for Service and Scholarship from Wesleyan University. She is co-vice President of the Board of Directors of the Margaret Mahler Foundation and has served on the Board of Directors for both Emotions Matter, a peer support organization for patients with personality disorders, and the Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center, a nonprofit arts organization.

She is in private practice of individual, couple, and family psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. She also holds a certificate in consultation and executive coaching from the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR). She is an Associated Editor for the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and is on the Editorial Boards of Psychoanalytic Psychology, Psychological Issues, the Journal of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, and Psychoanalytic Inquiry.