Treatment (Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis)

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In her private practice, Dr. Diamond conducts psychotherapy and psychoanalysis with adults, adolescents, and couples both in person and through teleconference. Diamond treats patients with symptoms of anxiety and depression and at varying levels of personality organization, from high functioning to borderline. Her therapeutic work is based on a psychodynamic object relations approach that combines psychoanalytic theory, attachment theory, and affective neuroscience. The major focus of this form of therapy is on identifying and modulating the maladaptive perceptions of self and others and the extreme feelings linked to them as they are experienced in the relationship with the therapist. From an object relations perspective, it is the underlying distorted mental representations that often fuel the difficulties with self-esteem and emotion regulation, symptoms of anxiety and depression, the internal distress and conflict, and the difficulties with intimacy and/or unsatisfying relationships that bring individuals to treatment. The difficulties with self and interpersonal functioning that patients bring to treatment may be relatively mild to more severe, and the treatment approach is modified accordingly. 

Personality Disorders:  Borderline and Narcissistic Disorders

For the past 30 years, Dr. Diamond has worked to advance the theory, research, and treatment of personality disorders with a particular emphasis on narcissistic and borderline disorders. Along with her colleagues at the Personality Disorders Institute at Weill Cornell Medical College, Dr. Diamond has helped to develop Transference Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) for borderline and narcissistic disorders (TFP-N) (see the website of the International Society for Transference Focused Psychotherapy www.istfp.org). The goal of TFP is to identify the internal self and object representations that organize the person’s experience of themself and others. By exploring these relational patterns as they emerge in the therapeutic relationship, the patient learns to identify, reflect on, and modify their often distorted working models of self and their often dysregulating affects, which underlie their symptoms and difficulties with identity, lack of goal direction, and turbulent and/or unsatisfying relationships.  These affectively charged perceptions of self and others, which may be expressed in the patient’s interactions with the therapist or in descriptions of current interpersonal relationships, are the focus of therapy.  Over time, as the extreme affects are tempered and polarized representations of self and others are gradually modified and integrated, experiences of self and others coalesce, leading to identity integration and greater capacity for love and work.

Dr. Diamond currently teaches, lectures, and supervises both TFP and TFP-N internationally, and has participated in establishing training programs in several sites in North America (New York, Los Angeles and Boston) and in Europe (The Psychiatric Institute, London and University of Milan, Italy). As a result of these training programs, several independent TFP centers have been established, with a direct impact on public health policy.  For example, TFP is now recognized as an evidence-based treatment in the National Health Service (NHS) in the U.K. In addition to her teaching and supervision, Dr. Diamond has authored or co-authored numerous articles (over 40 peer-reviewed papers and 30 book chapters) on the theory, research, and treatment of patients with borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. 

Publications & Teaching