Alessandra Lemma
Organisation(s)
Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families
Overview
Alessandra Lemma MA, MPhil (Cantab), DClin Psych., is a Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London, and Visiting Professor of Psychological Therapies at Essex University. Since 2002 she has worked as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist in the Adolescent Department at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, where she is also Head of the Psychological Therapies Development Unit. Since 2008 she has been the Collaboration Lead for joint projects between the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and the Anna Freud Centre. Originally trained with the British Association of Psychotherapists (BAP) as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, she then went on to train as a psychoanalyst and is now a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society.
She has a strong interest in psychological therapies and is a supervisor and trainer in Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT). Along with Peter Fonagy and Mary Target, she has been leading on the development of a new protocol for a brief psychodynamic intervention for mood disorders, Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT).
She is the General Editor of the New Library of Psychoanalysis Book Series, first launched in 1987, in association with the Institute of Psychoanalysis, London. This Series took over from the International Psychoanalytical Library, which published many of the early translations of the works of Freud and the writings of most of the leading British and Continental psychoanalysts. If you are interested in submitting a book proposal, please contact Alessandra Lemma directly at the address below. Since 1999 she has been the Editor-in Chief of the Journal Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: Applications, Theory and Research, which publishes original contributions on the application, development and evaluation of psychoanalytic ideas and therapeutic interventions in the public health sector and other related applied settings.
Alessandra Lemma lectures extensively in the UK and internationally and has published several books on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Her clinical and theoretical interests are focussed on body image disturbances (particularly body dysmorphia and body modification practices), trauma, adolescent development and the psychology of humour.