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Alessandra Lemma (AL)
Alessandra Lemma is a consultant clinical psychologist, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and
psychoanalyst. She is Trust-wide Head of Psychology at the Tavistock and Portman NHS
Foundation Trust and Visiting Professor of Psychological Therapies, School of Health and
Human Sciences, Essex University. She teaches and publishes over a large number of areas
including: psychopathology; humour; psychoanalytic psychotherapy; trauma and body
image disturbances; Klein and envy; self-harm and suicide and the applications of
psychoanalysis. Lemma is currently pioneering Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy in
conjunction with her colleagues at the Anna Freud Centre, London.
Meeting Alessandra Lemma
Before meeting AL 371 , she was simply the author of a book that I had adopted as the key
text for the psychodynamic course I ran. 372 AL agreed to do a training day and I arranged to
collect her from the concourse at New Street railway station, Birmingham.
It seemed surreal meeting a highly regarded author, speaker and psychoanalyst outside
Millie’s Cookies but that’s what happened. In my mind I was expecting a tall Italian grey-
haired academic wearing black. When AL approached me I was surprised as she was very
different from my imagination. As the day unfolded I found her to be erudite, creative,
thoughtful with a quality of ‘realness’ that I found immensely attractive.
371 Two years before this interview took place.
372 An Introduction to Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (2003). Lemma was also the author of other highly rated
books: this however was the one that best suited my course.
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