Vittorio Lingiardi, MD, 2023
/Professor Vittorio Lingiardi’s pioneering work in psychodynamic diagnosis and LGBTQ+ issues demonstrates an ability to bridge the gap between the richness and complexity of psychoanalytical clinical practice and the need for empirical soundness; all the while finding novel ways to extend psychoanalysis’ reach and effect. On these topics he has been able to reach key audiences through books, articles, editorials, TV programs, and social networks. His research in the LGBTQ+ field has helped change a "classical" and often pathologizing psychoanalytic viewpoint. He helped formulate and publish the Italian guidelines, endorsed by the National Board of Italian Psychologists, for psychotherapy and counseling with LGBTQ+ patients and has often spoken publicly in defense of minoritized groups and families’ civil rights to increase social acceptance.
Additionally, Lingiardi’s work focused on “resuscitating” the word diagnosis in psychoanalytic culture and clinical practice. He and Nancy Williams co-edited the second edition of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM-2). Their revisions embedded an empirically based psychoanalytic approach to diagnosis and placed personality and its traits in a broader psychoanalytic diagnostic framework. Closely interconnected with the patient's mental functioning and symptomatology, grounded in research, and systematized in the PDM-2, the Manual now reaches an international audience in multiple languages.
A psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and full professor at Sapienza University of Rome, Lingiardi splits his clinical practice focus on working with patients from marginalized groups and serving people with personality and interpersonal problems.