In Their Own Words

Like so many organizations, we were challenged to explore new ways to celebrate honorees during the pandemic. In 2020 our winners collaborated with us to produce short videos to share their award-winning work with a broader audience and it has now become an annual tradition.

Videos highlighting The Sigourney Award recipients work showcase how psychoanalysis and the application of psychoanalytic principles across disciplines can transform the human experience for the better. Our hope is to inspire conversations in the world of psychoanalysis and beyond, while enhancing the impact winners’ work may have within communities around the world.

Click the videos below for a glimpse into work that is making a difference.


2023

In 2023, the award-winning work synthesized psychoanalysis with other disciplines and sought to mitigate human suffering based on sexual and gender identity, race, or religion, and oppression by authoritarian regimes.


2022

The award-winning work in 2022 represented sea changes in the understanding of psychoanalytic theory and clinical applications. This year’s topics span modern concepts and techniques, gender and sexuality, racial equity and social justice, youth mental health, and parent-child relationships.


2021

Confronting Societal Problems to Alleviate Individual and Community Suffering

The Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy’s award-winning work focuses on access, education, and research. Advocating for access to mental healthcare, supporting of schools and communities, and conducting suicide research, education, and prevention only begins to describe their work.


Traversing Traditions and Culture in China, Russia, and Beyond

Dr. David Scharff and Dr. Jill Savege Scharff’s award-winning work introduced couples and family therapy to families in China and Russia. Well in advance of Covid19, the Scharff’s delivered online curriculum to train prospective analysts and brought tele-analysis to people with little or no access to local resources.


Connecting What the Analyst Hears and What the Dermatologist Sees

Dr. Jorge Claudio Ulnik’s award-winning work concentrates on unconscious factors that affect physical well-being, which is revealed on the skin. The work reaches across disciplines to forge a non-traditional psychoanalytic path between psychosomatic and psychodermatology.


2019 & 2020