Application Window Now Closed
The 2025 application window is closed. 2025 winner will be announced in November. The 2026 application window will open March 1, 2026.
How to Apply
In accordance with Mary Sigourney’s wishes, The Sigourney Award recognizes and rewards groundbreaking work that has advanced psychoanalytic principles, thought, or practice.
The Sigourney Award welcomes applications from around the globe each year. The Trust recognizes that the applicant pool includes extremely accomplished individuals and organizations, with contributions spanning decades. However, The Sigourney Award recognizes only work which has been produced during the most recent ten years. For the 2026 award, only work produced from 2016 through 2025 will be considered.
The application questions are designed to help the international panel of judges assess the merits and impact of the applicants’ work. Each individual applicant, team, or organization is asked the same questions. Because submissions vary widely in terms of style, scope, medium, aim, and application, it is up to the applicant and their supporters to provide the judges with clear and detailed information about the work’s relevance, context, and implications.
We encourage applications from anyone conducting groundbreaking work anywhere in the world and in any language supported by Google Translate. Please note that the evaluation of submissions will mainly be conducted in English using Google Translate, except when a judge is multilingual.
Submitted work may belong to a wide variety of fields. Work will be assessed in terms of one or more of these criteria:
advancing The Sigourney Award's vision and mission
enriching psychoanalytic thought, techniques, applications, practices, or institutions
enhancing the cultural and social impact of psychoanalysis
facilitating collaborations or dialogues between psychoanalysis and another discipline
creating work in any form of art that resonates with or casts a new light upon psychoanalysis, in any of its aspects
expanding the reach of psychoanalytic principles, treatment, or thought generally, or in a specific region, group, or cultural context
increasing positive public awareness of psychoanalytic principles
The Sigourney Award has never been a lifetime achievement award. In fact, Mary Sigourney specifically required that eligible work must be accomplished within 10 years of the award year.
Each year, work may be submitted from any place in the world. Organizations, groups, and individuals may submit work for consideration from any place in the world, in any year, and in more than 100 languages (via our online translation). Judging will be conducted in English leveraging a translation tool.
The application includes writing prompts to assist applicants in highlighting their work's impact. Each applicant is required to answer the required questions to enable an equitable evaluation of applications. Drafts of the application can be saved and edited multiple times before submitting.
All Applicants will need to provide:
Name, email, address, phone
Answers to a series of questions designed to help applicants articulate the impact of their work over the past ten years
A single sentence statement describing the impact of the work
180 word summary of work paragraph
Applicants/nominees will have to request three online Letters of Support as part of the online application. (Note: only three form letters will be accepted, one of which may be written by a nominator.)
Instead of a complete CV encompassing a lifetime of work, the Trust requires applicants to provide ten years’ worth of credentials that support the work submitted
Photo or Logo
Professional head and shoulder portrait with a simple background
Color or black & white
1200x1200 pixels minimum, 512 kilobytes minimum
JPG, PNG or TIFF files only
for use only in promoting Award Recipients
Optional
External validation such as press or video coverage
Sample of work such as an article you have written–a play, a book, significant paper, video, etc.
All submitted materials will become the property of The Sigourney Award Trust.