Arash's World Podcast Interview with Calibán in Spanish and English
As we continue to expand our reach across the globe, we’re very happy to share both a Spanish language and English language interview on Arash’s World Podcast with 2025 Sigourney Award recipient, Calibán.
Tune in to hear Maria Luisa “Mati” Silva Checa, Editor in Chief (Spanish), and Deputy Editor Silvana Rea (English) as they discuss the Caliban team’s well-deserved win with podcaster Arash Farzaneh, and offer an inside look into producing the international journal. You can also find Arash’s World Podcast on Spotify and other platforms.
Editor in Chief Maria Luisa “Mati” Silva Checa (Spanish)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI3LjTlaxnY
Deputy Editor Silvana Rea (English)
The Sigourney Award-2025 Recipients Announced!
A notable panel of anonymous judges evaluated a broad spectrum of work from 11 countries and selected four bodies of work most closely aligned with Mary Sigourney’s vision. Please join us in congratulating The Sigourney Award-2025 recipients In alphabetical order, clockwise from top left, recipients include: Dana Amir, PhD (Haifa, Israel); Calibán, Latin American Journal of Psychoanalysis (Montevideo, Uruguay); Siri Hustvedt, PhD (New York, USA); and ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action (New York, USA).
The Sigourney Award-2025 Celebrates Four Recipients Honored for Creative Trailblazing Work Expanding Psychoanalytic Thought Globally
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Interdisciplinary Work from Israel, Uruguay, and the United States Earns The Prestigious Sigourney Award-2025 Prize
San Francisco, CA – Nov. 11, 2025 – The trailblazing work of four recipients has won The Sigourney Award-2025, earning international recognition and a substantial cash prize for advancing psychoanalytic thought and principles throughout the world. Announced today by Robin A. Deutsch, PhD, Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, recipients include: Dana Amir, PhD (Haifa, Israel); Calibán, Latin American Journal of Psychoanalysis (Montevideo, Uruguay); Siri Hustvedt, PhD (New York, USA); and ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action (New York, USA).
"The 2025 recipients’ work demonstrates a renaissance of creative and applied psychoanalytic thought. Their contributions span theory, visual arts, literature, poetry, and applied and clinical practice enhancing the richness of the psychoanalytic endeavor. This work enhances and influences understanding and acceptance of psychoanalysis and its benefits to society,” says Dr. Deutsch.
Founded by Mary Sigourney in 1989, The Sigourney Award was established to annually recognize and promote exceptional achievements of the past decade that foster greater understanding, innovation, and acceptance of psychoanalysis and its societal benefits. A notable panel of anonymous judges evaluated a broad spectrum of work from 11 countries and selected four bodies of work that most closely aligned with Sigourney's vision. Full summaries of the recipients’ work are available at www.sigourneyaward.org.
Dana Amir, PhD (Haifa, Israel)
Professor Dana Amir’s pioneering work has brought a novel and sophisticated perspective to the study of how trauma is conveyed in language. Her work portrays the traumatic lacuna as a melting pot of language that creates multiple forms of external and internal syntax. Her research delves into both perpetrators' and victims' testimonies, focusing on aspects such as word choice, tone, rhythm, and inflection. By mapping the interplay between dissociative and associative forces, she has identified new pathways for therapeutic intervention, demonstrating that language can serve simultaneously as a symptom of trauma and a vehicle for healing. Amir’s research and insights on the language of revenge and forgiveness have become a vital tool for both therapeutic and broader social interventions and provided a framework for facilitating dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.
Calibán, Latin American Journal of Psychoanalysis (Montevideo, Uruguay)
Calibán, Latin American Journal of Psychoanalysis, the official journal of the Psychoanalytic Federation of Latin America (FEPAL), is a stunning and engaging international journal that has cultivated both critical thinking and cultural expansion within the psychoanalytic community. Calibán provides a space where psychoanalytic theory meaningfully engages with linguistic diversity, cultural perspectives, and social and artistic sensibilities. Driven by a devoted team of ~80 volunteers hailing from various countries, Calibán is renowned for its collaborative editorial initiatives. Originally published in both Spanish and Portuguese, Calibán is now also translated into English. It is a global resource for both scientific and popular readership on its freely accessible digital platform. Calibán embodies a collaborative spirit and capacity for dialogue that continues to grow ever stronger and is led by María Luisa Silva, Calibán’s Editor-in-Chief.
Siri Hustvedt, PhD (New York, USA)
Dr. Siri Hustvedt’s extraordinary work mines rich seams in psychoanalysis, literature, and culture and has significantly advanced the ongoing relevance of psychoanalysis in current intellectual and cultural discourse. An international author of both fiction and non-fiction, Hustvedt examines the intersections of psychoanalysis with art, philosophy, neuroscience, psychiatry, and the history of medicine. Her work is noted for probing questions about identity, gender, selfhood, and perception, drawing upon the insights of psychoanalytic thinkers such as Freud, Lacan, Winnicott, Bion, and neuropsychoanalyst Solms. Rejecting the notion that psychoanalytic thinking is outdated or confined to the past, Hustvedt’s writings resonate with both practitioners and general audiences and demonstrates the profound impact that psychoanalytic theory and practice continue to have on people’s lives today.
ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action (New York, USA)
Brilliantly curated and edited, ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action is a global and free digital forum and platform that has illuminated and forged new connections between psychoanalysis and the most pressing social, political, and cultural issues facing the contemporary world. Through its wide-ranging collection of essays, creative writing, memoirs, poetry, art, and community projects, ROOM places a psychoanalytic lens on contemporary challenges while embodying a uniquely new analytic modality for collective connection and societal change. Today ROOM serves as a valued tool for education and public scholarship, having evolved beyond its original format to produce films, books, events, and collaborative educational programming. Led by co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Hattie Myers, PhD, these initiatives further expand knowledge of psychoanalysis and highlight its potential applications across diverse fields.
"Calibán and Room spark scientific, political, and artistic dialogue and offer regional perspectives with a global ambition. The work manages to blur the artificial boundaries between pure and applied psychoanalysis and clinical and cultural fields that escalate the impact of The Sigourney Award and offer sounding boards to amplify a wide variety of perspectives,” says Deutsch.
“The publications’ resulting work along with exceptional achievements by Professor Amir and Dr. Hustvedt are illustrative of our founder’s vision of psychoanalytic work that can benefit society as a whole,” says Michael J. Harrington, JD, Attorney Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust.
Dana Amir’s Work Wins The Sigourney Award-2025
Professor Amir’s pioneering work has brought a novel and sophisticated perspective to the study of how trauma is conveyed in language. Amir has identified new pathways for therapeutic intervention, demonstrating that language can serve simultaneously as a symptom of trauma and a vehicle for healing.
Innovative Psychoanalytic Trauma Work by Dana Amir, PhD Earns International Recognition With The Sigourney Award-2025
San Francisco, CA – Nov. 11, 2025 -- The Sigourney Award annually bestows international distinction and a substantial cash prize honoring outstanding psychoanalytic work completed during the past decade. A prestigious panel of judges carefully reviewed applicants from 11 countries across the globe and today, Robin A. Deutsch, PhD, Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust announces Dana Amir, PhD (Haifa, Israel) as one of four international recipients whose work earned the notable recognition.
“The creativity, breadth, and quality of Professor Amir’s achievements as a clinician, teacher, supervisor, administrator, scholar, and Hebrew-language poet are matched only by the bravery and compassion of her interventions in the fields of contemporary trauma, testimony, and intervention,” says Dr. Deutsch.
Dana Amir, PhD (Haifa, Israel)
Professor Amir’s pioneering work has brought a novel and sophisticated perspective to the study of how trauma is conveyed in language. Her work portrays the traumatic lacuna as a melting pot of language that creates multiple forms of external and internal syntax. Her research delves into both perpetrators' and victims' testimonies, focusing on aspects such as word choice, tone, rhythm, and inflection. Through this approach, she encourages clinicians and patients alike to cultivate a poetic and lyrical sensitivity, one that focuses on the narrator rather than on the narrative, thus shedding light not on the factual story but on the unique way it is structured.
By mapping the interplay between dissociative and associative forces, Amir has identified new pathways for therapeutic intervention, demonstrating that language can serve simultaneously as a symptom of trauma and a vehicle for healing. This dual role of language is also reflected in her own poetic creations, which embody the dialectic between psychic pain and creativity. Amir’s insights on the language of revenge and forgiveness provided a framework for facilitating dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. In this way, her research has become a vital tool for both therapeutic and broader social interventions.
As a clinician, scholar, administrator, and published Hebrew-language poet, Amir has played a significant role in reinvigorating psychoanalytic thought within the Israeli academic community. In 2015 she established and continues to lead the interdisciplinary doctoral and postdoctoral track in psychoanalysis at Haifa University.
“My psychoanalytic work is deeply rooted in music and literature, and this means that what I am always looking for is not what people have in common but what sets them apart: the unique language in which they embody their deepest core,” says Amir. “Working with collective as well as individual trauma for many years taught me that, in the end, every abyss is unique, and therefore every way out is unique as well. It is based on what makes each one of us irreducible, irreplaceable. It is based on our lyrical core, or maybe the poet inside each of us.”
Amir’s work was awarded alongside Calibán, Latin American Journal of Psychoanalysis (Montevideo, Uruguay); Siri Hustvedt, PhD (New York, USA); and ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action (New York, USA).
Calibán’s Work Wins The Sigourney Award-2025
Calibán, the official journal of the Psychoanalytic Federation of Latin America (FEPAL), is a stunning and engaging international Publication that has fostered both critical thinking and cultural growth within the psychoanalytic community.
Extraordinary Team Work by Calibán Latin American Journal of Psychoanalysis Earns International Recognition With The Sigourney Award-2025
San Francisco, CA – Nov. 11, 2025 – International recognition and a substantial cash prize are annually bestowed by The Sigourney Award Trust to honor outstanding psychoanalytic work completed during the past 10 years. After a prestigious panel of judges reviewed work submitted from 11 countries, Robin A. Deutsch, PhD, Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, announces Calibán, Latin American Journal of Psychoanalysis, the official publication of the Psychoanalytic Federation of Latin America (FEPAL) based in Montevideo, Uruguay, as one of four international recipients presented the prestigious Sigourney Award-2025.
“Team Calibán has beautifully produced a provocative tri-lingual journal that negotiates international, disciplinary, and linguistic boundaries with fresh scientific and artistic perspectives about the dialogue between psychoanalysis and virtually every other aspect of human experience,’” says Dr. Deutsch.
Calibán, Latin American Journal of Psychoanalysis (Montevideo, Uruguay)
Extraordinary teamwork produces Calibán, the Latin American journal that has cultivated both critical thinking and cultural expansion within the international psychoanalytic community. Calibán provides a space where psychoanalytic theory meaningfully engages with linguistic diversity, cultural perspectives, and social and artistic sensibilities. Produced by a dedicated team of ~80 volunteers hailing from various countries, Calibán is led by María Luisa Silva, Editor-in-Chief and member of the Peruvian Society of Psychoanalysis and Silvana Rea, Deputy Editor-in-Chief and member of the Brazilian Society of Psychoanalysis.
Renowned for its collaborative editorial initiatives, Calibán’s editorial team employs a creative, expressive academic approach to Latin American reality, aiming to transcend regional borders. Calibán, published originally in Spanish and Portuguese, is now also available in English. It is freely accessible in a digital version serving as a global resource for both scientific and popular readership. The work encompasses a broad dialogue with art, reflected in its distinctive aesthetic quality and the participation of prominent artists alongside essays, literature, and music, earning a reputation as a collector’s item.
“We will continue expanding our impact on three fronts: outside the region by reaching a broader global audience; within the region by deepening engagement within Latin America; and targeting psychoanalysts in training with the New Voices Award,” says Silva. “Our commitment will ensure that Calibán continues to grow its influence as a dynamic and inclusive platform for psychoanalytic thought, dialogue, and creative expression.”
Initiatives such as “Calibán Goes on Tour” exemplify the team’s ability to transcend geographical boundaries, facilitating public events in museums, universities, and cultural spaces. Founded by enthusiastic psychoanalysts across Latin America, where psychoanalysis is renowned for its vibrancy and dynamism, Calibán embodies a collaborative spirit and capacity for dialogue that continues to grow.
The journal is recognized as a hallmark of a living, contemporary psychoanalytic culture that resonates with today’s generation. This approach is especially meaningful in an era when psychoanalysis is fragmented across numerous schools and organizations, making such unity and open conversation particularly welcome.
“On behalf of the entire editorial team, we are profoundly grateful and are proud to receive The Sigourney Award. The tireless dedication of the voluntary editorial team being honored is a source of immense joy and a testament to the collective effort that defines Caliban’s journey,” says Rea.
Calibán’s work was awarded alongside work by Dana Amir, PhD (Haifa, Israel); Siri Hustvedt, PhD (New York, USA); and ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action (New York, USA).
Siri Hustvedt’s Work Wins The Sigourney Award-2025
Dr. Siri Hustvedt’s extraordinary work mines rich seams in psychoanalysis, literature, and culture and has significantly advanced the ongoing relevance of psychoanalysis in current intellectual and cultural discourse.
Work by Siri Hustvedt, PhD Wins The Sigourney Award-2025 for Fusing Psychoanalysis, Literature and Culture to Advance Psychoanalysis’ Relevance
San Francisco, CA – Nov. 11, 2025 – Every year, The Sigourney Award bestows international recognition and a substantial cash prize honoring outstanding psychoanalytic work completed during the past 10 years. After a prestigious panel of judges reviewed work submitted from 11 countries across the globe, Robin A. Deutsch, PhD, Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, announces Siri Hustvedt, PhD (New York, USA) as one of four recipients whose work is honored with The Sigourney Award-2025.
“A prolific and accomplished writer in many genres, Dr. Hustvedt has written poems, novels, essays, and scholarly articles of astonishing intellectual range. In each, she addresses questions of identity, gender, consciousness, and perception with a sensibility steeped in psychoanalytic insight and nuance,” says Dr. Deutsch.
Siri Hustvedt, PhD (New York, USA)
Dr. Siri Hustvedt’s extraordinary work mines rich seams in psychoanalysis, literature, and culture and has significantly advanced the ongoing relevance of psychoanalysis in current intellectual and cultural discourse. An international author of both fiction and non-fiction, Hustvedt examines the intersections of psychoanalysis with art, philosophy, neuroscience, psychiatry, and the history of medicine.
Her work draws upon the insights of psychoanalytic thinkers such as Freud, Lacan, Winnicott, Bion, and Solms. Rejecting the notion that psychoanalytic thinking is outdated or confined to the past, Hustvedt’s writings resonate with both practitioners and general audiences. She demonstrates the profound impact that psychoanalytic theory and practice continue to have on people’s lives today.
Hustvedt’s acclaimed works include A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind (Simon and Schuster, 2016) and Memories of the Future: A Novel (Simon and Schuster, 2019). In Hustvedt’s recent paper, "Umbilical Phantoms" published in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 103, no. 2, 2022, she regarded umbilical phantoms as part of a defensive amnesia about early bodily connectivity to the mother that haunts both psychoanalysis and philosophy. Through these books and numerous essays, Hustvedt continues to shape and expand the dialogue around psychoanalysis and its contemporary significance.
Beyond her publications, Hustvedt is lecturer in the Dewitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and teaches a monthly seminar in narrative psychiatry to residents. In addition, she has taught writing workshops for psychiatric patients at the Payne Whitney Clinic and later shared her learnings in an essay referencing Freud's literary versus scientific worries. Her lectures and workshops have introduced new ways of thinking about the practice of medicine and redefining the relationship between clinician and patient that has had a lasting effect on medical practice.
“Freud's scientific research interested me long before I began attending neuropsychoanalysis lectures in New York that helped me explore the complexity of objective/subjective perspectives,” says Hustvedt. “In my work, literature is a form of knowledge I link to the creative ‘between zone’ of psychoanalysis where insight can arrive suddenly, surprisingly, and surreptitiously. Memories of the Future, a novel as faux autobiography, is essentially a testament to liberation by therapeutic dialogue. My eleven years in therapy unleashed a new freedom in me, and I consider myself a walking advertisement for psychoanalytically-based psychotherapy. To paraphrase Freud, psychoanalysis freed me from patterns that hindered the fullness of my life; I was liberated.”
Hustvedt’s work was honored alongside the work of Dana Amir, PhD (Haifa, Israel); Calibán, Latin American Journal of Psychoanalysis (Montevideo, Uruguay); and ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action (New York, USA).
Download Full Press Release Here
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ROOM’s Work Wins The Sigourney Award-2025
ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action, a brilliantly curated and edited free digital forum and platform, has illuminated and forged new connections between psychoanalysis and the most pressing social, political, and cultural issues facing the contemporary world.
ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action’s Work Wins The Sigourney Award-2025 for Initiating Contemporary Psychoanalytic Discussions and Actions
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Nonprofit ROOM’s Platform Places a Psychoanalytic Lens on Pressing Issues and Extends Psychoanalytic Action into the Public Sphere
San Francisco, CA – Nov. 11, 2025 -- The Sigourney Award annually bestows international recognition and a substantial cash prize to honor outstanding psychoanalytic work completed during the past 10 years. A prestigious panel of judges carefully reviewed applicants from 11 countries across the globe and today, Robin A. Deutsch, PhD, Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, announces ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action (New York, USA), an organization offering an innovative free digital forum and platform, as one of four recipients whose work wins The Sigourney Award-2025.
“As a living agora, ROOM has created a space for contemporary discussions, making the word ‘action’ possible in the psychoanalytical field, where reflection traditionally prevails. By engaging artists, poets, and voices from diverse disciplines, it dynamically expands psychoanalytic thought well beyond the clinical setting,” says Dr. Deutsch.
ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action (New York, USA)
Brilliantly curated and edited, ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action is a global, free digital forum and platform that has illuminated and forged new connections between psychoanalysis and the most pressing social, political, and cultural issues facing the contemporary world. Led by Hattie Myers, PhD, co-founder and Editor-in-Chief, ROOM’s wide-ranging collection of essays, creative writing, memoirs, poetry, art, and community projects place a psychoanalytic lens on contemporary challenges while embodying a uniquely new analytic modality for collective connection and societal change.
ROOM, produced collaboratively by more than 30 volunteers, serves as a valued tool for education and public scholarship, having evolved beyond its original format to produce films, books, events, and collaborative educational programming. These initiatives further expand knowledge of psychoanalysis and highlight its potential applications across diverse fields. By working on multiple levels, psychoanalytic action within ROOM is enhanced through the inclusion of visual artists whose contributions bring nonverbal and affective power to each publication. The featured artists’ statements not only illuminate their own practices but also articulate the synergy between their visual work and the analytic content of each issue.
Conceived of just days after the 2016 U.S. presidential election as an agent of community building, ROOM now reaches readers in more than 160 countries. Each issue of ROOM offers a window through which readers experience how culture and politics impact us personally, and how our psychology affects our environment and political reality. ROOM is published three times a year, is available free online and in print for purchase. Following each issue, an international roundtable allows readers and authors to deepen the conversation together. Additionally, ROOM produces a biweekly podcast featuring contributors to the magazine.
When Myers was asked to describe ROOM’s impact, she shared the words Dr. Karim Dajani offered during a gala speech. “Naguib Mahfouz the Egyptian Nobel prize winner said, ‘Happiness lies in the crevices of tragedy like diamonds lie in the crevices of the earth.’ ROOM shines a light in the crevices where forgotten wisdom, marginalized individuals, and repressed ideas are brought back into the fold for all to see, learn from, and enjoy. I’m so proud to be a part of that effort."
Dr. Helí Morales Ascencio's Work Continues to be Relevant
On “Throwback Thursday” we’re taking a look back at recipients in the news as we prepare to announce our 2025 award winners. Revisit Dr. Helí Morales Ascencio’s work with female victims of violence and relatives of the disappeared.
In 2021, Sigourney Award-2020 recipient Dr. Helí Morales Ascencio was featured in @PsychiatricTimes where he shared, “What is happening in Mexico and Latin America makes me want to investigate what psychoanalysis could say about cruelty, violence against girls and women, and the painful dimension of trauma in order to breakdown the violence.” His work remains relevant and impactful.
Read here: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/psychoanalysis-as-tool-against-violence
2024 Recipient Ububele Q & A with Psychiatric Times
The Psychiatric Times conversation details how The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust was founded and their focus on early childhood interventions to break cycles of emotional poverty.
We’re proud to see Psychiatric Times Q&A feature the leaders of the @Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust based in South Africa, a Sigourney Award-2024 recipient. Read their story here:
Recipients Working Together
We’re very proud to see two Sigourney recipients collaborating during a free virtual event this week! Professor Mark Solms (Sigourney Award-2011) presents the keynote discussion for the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Rapaport-Klein Study Group which is hosted by Sigourney Award-2021 recipients from the Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy of the Austen Riggs Center.
Solms will argue against the criticism that Strachey falsely scientized Freud. Register to attend the class free of charge.
Register for the accredited June 20 class scheduled at 8 – 10 pm EDT.
Free Online Discussion With Another Sigourney Recipient
Dominique Scarfone, MD, joins an online discussion entitled “The Sexual Drive for Power – The Passion for Ever More” with Orshi Hunyady, PhD, serving as moderator.
The event scheduled on April 4 is part of the 2024-25 Psychoanalytic Society of William Alanson White Institute Colloquium Series, you may register for the free event here: https://wawhite.org/event/dominique-scarfone-md-the-sexual-drive-for-power-the-passion-for-ever-more/
2024 Recipient Björn Salomonsson Online Talk
Sigourney Award-2024 recipient, Björn Salomonsson will join Tessa Baradon in a webinar on March 21st entitled “Rupture and Repair,” in the Early Relationships and Mental Health hosted by @TRTogether.
This is “the professional learning platform of Tavistock Relationships (TR), a UK-based group promoting the study and practice of counselling and psychotherapy. Salomonsson and Baradon will focus on the concept of rupture and repair in therapist-parent-infant relationships, drawing on research from pioneers including Stern, Trevarthen, Tronick, and Beebe. Find details and registration here:
https://trtogether.com/events/parent-infant-baradon/individual-registration
Dr. Ulnik in the News
We always love when we can promote the work of two recipients at once. Sigourney Award-2021 recipient, Dr. Jorge Claudio Ulnik, MD, PhD will present a live webinar entitled Psychoanlaytic Approaches to the Skin Patient on Friday (3/14) for the Austen Riggs Center’s ( 2021 Sigourney Award recipient) “Virtual Grand Rounds.”
Offering 1.0 CE/CME, the course will: identify the most common complaints, behavior and the unconscious phantasies of skin patients; compare the Ego functions and the skin functions; and apply psychoanalytic knowledge to the clinical practice with skin patients.
Register here: https://tinyurl.com/4xtedtss
Sigourney Award Recipient on Arash's World Podcast
Merav Roth, Sigourney Award - 2024 recipient, is a guest on Arash's World Podcast. Click below for a link to the episode.
Posted on YouTube, you can both listen and watch the fascinating discussion about her work in literature and reading as well as trauma.
Another Winner in the News
We’re proud to see this @alessandriatoday.piercarlolava news announcement regarding Sigourney Award-2023 recipient, Vittorio Lingiardi. Read more about this free event on Friday, December 6 at 5.45 pm .
He joins Daria Bignardi for a discussion of his book “Corpo, umana” (Body, Human) this Friday, December 6 at 5.45 pm in the Great Council Chamber of the Ducal Palace Foundation Genoa, Italy. Free admission.
Winners in the News
We’ve just had big news to announce with our most recent Sigourney Award recipients’ introductions and we’re proud to see previous recipients continue to do great work around the world. Join Professor Lemma and others at this free conference speaking on Mourning and Melancholy in the Digital Age, Wed., Nov 27th.
Professor Alessandra Lemma, University College London, a Sigourney Award-2022 recipient, will speak at a conference on Wed., Nov. 27th in Geneva. She joins discussant Professor Martin Debbane, FPSE, University of Geneva for the free conference given in English, with simultaneous translation.
The Sigourney Award-2024 Recipients Announced!
Distinguished judges evaluated submissions from an exceptional pool of global applicants and four recipients’ work merited the prestigious award. Please join us in congratulating The Sigourney Award-2024 recipients (in alphabetical order): Merav Roth, PhD (Tel Aviv, Israel); Björn Salomonsson, MD (Stockholm, Sweden); Dominique Scarfone, MD (Montreal, Canada), and The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust (Johannesburg, South Africa).
The Sigourney Award-2024 Recipients Honored For Outstanding Work Advancing
Psychoanalytic Principles Globally
Four Recipients’ Work From Israel, Sweden, Canada and South Africa Earns
The Sigourney Award-2024
SEATTLE, WA – Nov. 12, 2024 – The Sigourney Award Trust annually recognizes outstanding work that advances psychoanalytic thought and principles throughout the world. Robin A. Deutsch, PhD and Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, today announces three individuals and one organization whose work of the past decade earns The Sigourney Award-2024 and a substantial cash prize. Recipients include: Merav Roth, PhD (Tel Aviv, Israel); Björn Salomonsson, MD (Stockholm, Sweden); Dominique Scarfone, MD (Montreal, Canada); and The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust (Johannesburg, South Africa).
"The 2024 recipients’ work has uniquely and positively impacted populations, including the youngest among us, by expanding access and understanding of psychoanalysis as well as psychotherapy’s benefits to professionals and the general public,” says Dr. Deutsch. "The anonymous judges, who likewise conduct exemplary professional careers, evaluated work from 10 countries to select work that most closely aligned with Mary Sigourney's original intent.”
Founded by Mary Sigourney in 1989, The Sigourney Award was established to recognize and promote exceptional work that advances psychoanalytic principles and their ability to better humankind.
Work Meriting The Sigourney Award-2024 (Alphabetical order)
Merav Roth, PhD (Tel Aviv, Israel)
Prof. Merav Roth’s exceptional interdisciplinary work included an unparalleled approach to psychoanalysis and literature, which gave readers a better understanding of the deep psychic processes involved in reading and earned her a reputation as a pioneering psychoanalytic thinker. Her notable work also expands to her impactful role as a writer and activist on trauma, ethics and culture in Israel and abroad. Accomplishments in the past decade include her first book, A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature - Reading the Reader (Routledge, 2020), where she described the unconscious processes involved in reading literature. As the former chair of the psychoanalytic psychotherapy program at Tel Aviv University, Roth established and still chairs “The Clinic For All” which provides pro-bono psychotherapy for deprived or disadvantaged populations. As a professor at the University of Haifa, Roth established a new philanthropic initiative, “Interweaving,” a culturally sensitive clinic for disadvantaged populations. Following the events of October 7 in Israel, Roth’s psychoanalytic work with trauma was swiftly employed to provide guidance and wide-reaching help, including establishing with two colleagues a philanthropic network of 450 psychoanalysts who provide long-term pro-bono support to survivors and their family members.
Björn Salomonsson, MD (Stockholm, Sweden)
Dr. Björn Salomonsson’s work has profoundly amplified psychoanalytic knowledge and infant caretaking techniques, and engaged non-psychoanalytic healthcare professionals participating in pre-, peri-, and post-natal care of mothers and infants. An Associate Professor at Swedish Psychoanalytic Institute, Salomonsson combined training in psychoanalysis and research to improve the early life of distressed babies by wholly refining Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy (PIP) methodology. He also co-founded The A Primo Foundation, with successful courses for nurses, midwives and psychologists in Maternity Units and Child Health Centers. His work pioneered psychoanalytic techniques for working directly with child health nurses who had little to no prior psychoanalytic exposure. Nurses used the techniques to address perturbed infant-parent relationships and creatively and respectfully bring a psychoanalytic understanding of the infant’s and parents' experience of troubled relationships. In his book Psychodynamic Interventions in Pregnancy and Infancy (2018), Salomonsson systematically describes how a therapist can practice treatment beyond the one-to-one model and deliver a multi-relationship-based psychoanalytic therapy model by actively engaging the infant during psychoanalytic therapy. Today, PIP is viewed as highly relevant for every analyst.
Dominique Scarfone, MD (Montreal, Canada)
Prof. Dominique Scarfone’s influential work has advanced a veritable renaissance in the study and transmission of French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche’s work and produced essential theoretical contributions in unconscious communication, temporality, and the translational model of the psyche. Providing a new approach to Freudian thinking, his endeavors bridge French, British and North American psychoanalytic culture. Scarfone’s work demonstrates how the marriage of tradition with radical thinking can expand the field of psychoanalysis. While maintaining a solid belief that Freud’s foundational method offers a common ground between these cultures, he has urged persistent questioning and reconsidering of Freud’s methods to liberate new thinking. Scarfone has illuminated a modern approach to how the psychosexual enters all these domains through work addressing clinical matters, questions of transference and repetition, one’s relationship to art and ethics, and the deep complexity of what it means to be human. Within the past ten years Scarfone has published three significant books including Laplanche (2014), The Unpast (2015), and The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche (2023).
The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust (Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa)
The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust’s outstanding work addresses the country’s traumatic past and current uncertainties, major challenges to personal relationships, mental-health challenges related to poverty, unemployment, poor infrastructure, and other crises by ingeniously magnifying the accessibility and efficacy of psychoanalytic treatment in South Africa. Ububele’s approach is rooted in the lived experiences of Johannesburg and Alexandra's community of over 500,000 people overburdened by harsh poverty, serious crime, corruption and the lesser recognized but lasting impact of apartheid. An essential awareness and acknowledgement of transference and the influence of the unconscious informs unique initiatives centered on promoting healthy parent-child attachment through the development of low-cost, replicable models of psychoanalytically informed interventions. Two examples include the Ububele Umdlezane Parent-Infant Programs focused on the first thousand days of life and the Therapy and Assessment Clinic which conducts psychoeducational assessments and psychotherapy services. Ububele’s capacity building methods offer initial and continuing training emphasizing the transference relationship and the necessity of working beyond the surface. The training provides youth and caregivers the psychoanalytically informed psycho-emotional support needed to succeed in breaking inter-generational cycles of emotional poverty and mental health despair.
"The Sigourney Award’s canons are unwavering and the Trust works tirelessly to ensure that Mary Sigourney’s intent is honored with a wholly independent assessment of exceptional work with each year’s Awards. We are fortunate to attract applications and nominations from around the world representing ground-breaking work that has advanced psychoanalytic thought and principles," says Michael J. Harrington, JD, Attorney Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust.
Merav Roth’s Work Wins The Sigourney Award - 2024
Professor Roth’s unprecedented interdisciplinary work on psychoanalysis and literature, and treatment of individual and collective trauma exercised original psychoanalytic thought and advanced “psychoanalysis for the people.”
Work by Merav Roth PhD Earns International Recognition With
The Sigourney Award-2024
Extraordinary interdisciplinary work on psychoanalysis and literature and pioneering psychoanalytic study, treatment of trauma earns Prof. Merav Roth The Sigourney Award-2024
Seattle, WA – Nov. 12, 2024 -- The Sigourney Award annually bestows international recognition and a substantial cash prize for outstanding work completed within the past 10 years that advances psychoanalytic thought worldwide. A prestigious panel of judges carefully reviewed applicants from 10 countries across the globe and today, Robin A. Deutsch, PhD and Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, announces Merav Roth, PhD (Tel Aviv, Israel) as one of four international recipients presented the prestigious prize.
“Dr. Roth’s work reflects Mary Sigourney’s commitment to reaching audiences outside the psychoanalytic community. Her work has benefited society and helped advance ‘psychoanalysis for the people’ through clinical work with disadvantaged populations and victims of trauma, and by introducing a psychoanalytic understanding of reading and literature, accessible to psychoanalysts and lay people,” says Dr. Deutsch.
Merav Roth, PhD (Tel Aviv, Israel)
Prof. Merav Roth’s pioneering work in studying and treating private and collective trauma has employed innovative applications of traditional and novel psychoanalytic thought and advanced Freud’s cherished goal of a “psychoanalysis for the people.” Alongside her work writing on trauma, ethics and culture in Israel and abroad, in the last decade Roth’s novel approach to psychoanalysis and literature has given readers a better understanding of the deep psychic processes involved in reading. Her impressive interdisciplinary work on psychoanalysis and literature earned her reputation as an original psychoanalytic thinker.
In her first book, A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature - Reading the Reader (Routledge, 2020), Roth described the unconscious processes involved in reading literature - a riddle that was declared challenging to reach by other researchers such as Holland and Lesser. Additional books have dealt with the human condition, internal battles, and ethical standing. Her work has elevated psychoanalytic programs at Tel Aviv University and at the University of Haifa, including founding post-graduate Klein studies in the Psychoanalytic psychotherapy program, Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, researching, writing and presenting psychoanalytic applications and interdisciplinary work (psychoanalysis and literature) to therapists and the public.
Another non-traditional application of psychoanalytic thought is to the field of ethical standing. Roth has written extensively on Holocaust literary works and on civil standing, human spirit and resilience in the face of evil and injustice - all from a Kleinian perspective, highlighting one’s challenge to avoid vengeance and promote human solidarity. Roth also founded philanthropic psychoanalytic psychotherapy clinics for disadvantaged populations (including survivors of prostitution, homelessness, etc.), and promoted pioneering psychoanalytic work with trauma. As the former chair of the psychoanalytic psychotherapy program at Tel Aviv University, Roth established and still chairs “The Clinic For All” which provides pro-bono psychotherapy for deprived or disadvantaged populations. As a professor at the University of Haifa, she established a new philanthropic initiative, “Interweaving,” a culturally sensitive clinic for diverse disadvantaged populations.
Roth’s psychoanalytic work with trauma was swiftly employed to provide guidance and wide-reaching help after the events of October 7 in Israel. She lived with the survivors of Kibbutz Be’eri to establish therapeutic first aid, and she still counsels them, the Hostages Families Forum and more. She and two colleagues established “FLM,” a civil philanthropic network of 450 psychoanalysts who provide expertise and pro-bono, long-term therapy for survivors and their family members.
Her theoretical and clinical work is innovative, poetic and rigorous. Her sought-after teachings are shared through media and participation in highly respected cultural and scientific platforms which helps bring psychoanalytic thinking to the forefront.
"The Sigourney Award and the recognition it conveys for groundbreaking psychoanalytic work give me and many analysts the strength to tirelessly continue applying psychoanalysis for the benefit of trauma survivors worldwide,” says Roth. “I deeply believe in the human capacity to transcend primitive tendencies and be our better selves.”
Björn Salomonsson’s Work Wins The Sigourney Award – 2024
Dr. Björn Salomonsson’s leading-edge work paved the path for applying psychoanalytic principles to infant and perinatal mental health and infant-parent relationships and introducing those techniques to community health care professionals.
Work by Björn Salomonsson MD Earns International Recognition With
The Sigourney Award-2024
Salomonsson’s work links classical psychoanalytic and attachment theory and infant research addressing distressed mothers and babies to earn The Sigourney Award-2024
Seattle, WA – Nov. 12, 2024 -- The Sigourney Award annually bestows international recognition and a substantial cash prize for outstanding work completed within the past 10 years that advances psychoanalytic thought. A prestigious panel of judges carefully reviewed applicants from 10 countries across the globe and today, Robin A. Deutsch, PhD and Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, announces Björn Salomonsson, MD and Assoc. Prof. (Stockholm, Sweden) as one of four international recipients presented the prestigious prize.
“Our founder Mary Sigourney sought to reward innovative work that bettered humankind. Dr. Salomonsson’s work has introduced psychoanalysts and non-psychoanalytic health care workers directly serving families to techniques that treat parent-infant dyads, creating decisive societal reverberations,” says Dr. Deutsch.
Björn Salomonsson, MD and Assoc. Prof. (Stockholm, Sweden)
Dr. Björn Salomonsson’s work has significantly amplified psychoanalytic knowledge and infant caretaking techniques and engaged non-psychoanalytic healthcare professionals involved in pre-, peri-, and post-natal care of mothers and infants. Combining training in psychoanalysis and research, his work improves the early life of distressed babies by profoundly refining psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy (PIP) methodology. His work pioneered psychoanalytic techniques working directly with child health nurses, whose exposure to psychoanalysis was minimal, to address perturbed infant-parent relationships. This creatively and respectfully introduced a psychoanalytic understanding of the infant’s and parents' experience of troubled relationships.
Today, PIP, no longer a pale shadow of adult treatment, is viewed as highly relevant for every analyst. Salomonsson’s research contributions focus on the psychic life of young children in their formative years. Notably, he is able to convey his findings to professionals and lay people through videos and other tools in an empirically comprehensible way. Strengthening links between clinical practice and psychoanalytic theory, his work has provided detailed clinical vignettes and used video-recorded therapies to better explicate the clinical process. Moreover, he has evaluated therapies quantitatively and anchored the research academically. In his book Psychodynamic Interventions in Pregnancy and Infancy (2018), Salomonsson systematically describes how during psychoanalytic therapy actively engaging the infant, the therapist can practice therapies beyond the one-to-one and deliver a multi-relationship-based psychoanalytic therapy model.
“I am thrilled that my work earned The Sigourney Award. We know that mental health, in the infant and later in the child, teenager, and adult, is crucially linked to the parent’s well-being. By providing skilled therapeutic help to families through the parent-infant therapy I have developed, we can get to ‘the root of children’s future,’” says Dr. Salomonsson.
Salomonsson now teaches at the Swedish Psychoanalytic Institute on infant sexuality, developmental theories, parent-infant psychotherapy, and nonverbal communication. He co-founded The A Primo Foundation, with successful courses for nurses, midwives and psychologists in Maternity Units and Child Health Centers. Within the Swedish, European, and International psychoanalytic societies, he has been a regular presenter and panelist at the World Association for Infant Mental Health Congresses, the Anna Freud Centre London, and at perinatal mental health and child health and midwifery conferences and workshops.
Dominique Scarfone’s Work Wins The Sigourney Award – 2024
Professor Dominique Scarfone’s influential work introduced French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche to a wide audience, bridging the French, British and North American psychoanalytic cultures, and produced essential theoretical contributions in unconscious communication, temporality, and translation.
Work by Dominique Scarfone MD Earns International Recognition With
The Sigourney Award-2024
Scarfone’s work advanced the study of French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche’s work and generated essential theoretical contributions to earn The Sigourney Award-2024
Seattle, WA – Nov. 12, 2024 -- Annually, The Sigourney Award bestows international recognition and a substantial cash prize honoring outstanding psychoanalytic work completed during the past 10 years. A prestigious panel of judges carefully reviewed applicants from 10 countries across the globe and today, Robin A. Deutsch, PhD and Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, announces Dominique Scarfone, MD (Montreal, Canada) as one of four international recipients presented the prestigious prize.
“Professor Scarfone’s work has expanded the reach of psychoanalysis by elucidating the psychoanalytic thinking and principles from Sigmund Freud and Jean Laplanche, working to build bridges between French, British and North American psychoanalytic cultures. His work also addresses questions of transference and repetition in our relationship to art and ethics and is an exceptional example of what Mary Sigourney called a ‘benefit for humankind,’” says Dr. Deutsch.
Dominique Scarfone, MD (Montreal, Canada)
Professor Dominique Scarfone’s influential work has advanced a veritable renaissance in the study and transmission of French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche’s work and produced essential theoretical contributions in unconscious communication, temporality, and translation. His work demonstrates how uniting tradition with radical thinking can expand the field of psychoanalysis.
Providing a new approach to Freudian thinking, Scarfone’s endeavors bridge French, British and North American psychoanalytic culture. Maintaining a solid belief that Freud’s foundational method offers a common ground between these cultures, he has urged persistent questioning and a reconsidering of Freud’s methods to evolve new thinking. Scarfone’s work has illuminated a modern path to understanding how the psychosexual enters the domains of transference and repetition, one’s relationship to art and ethics, and the deep complexity of what it means to be human.
His Freud and Laplanche scholarly work presents conceptual research and new ideas regarding the time dimension of psychic functioning. He has delivered distinct guidelines about the effects of psychoanalytic treatment, including the constitution of a real past instead of an ever present "unpast." Scarfone explained that Laplanche taught him how to turn the Freudian method upon Freud’s own writings to critically reassess them and thereby constantly refresh psychoanalytic thinking.
Scarfone’s efforts have generated new ideas about the psychoanalytic stance towards transference with the concept of “readiness,” or “availability,” and the inescapability of trauma in psychic life. Within the past ten years he has augmented his work, publishing three significant books including Laplanche (2014), The Unpast (2015), and The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche (2023). Further, his bi-weekly international seminar Penser avec Freud (Thinking with Freud) builds a better understanding of how Freud thought on a given topic.
“As an author deeply engaged in the development of psychoanalysis, receiving such a distinguished award is very gratifying. It tells me that there are organizations such as The Sigourney Award Trust who actively support the existence and development of psychoanalysis. This is of the utmost importance considering that our discipline, given the special nature of its subject matter, the unconscious, has to constantly struggle to assert its value,” says Scarfone.
Scarfone is a retired clinical psychoanalyst, a training and supervising analyst in the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society & Institute (Montreal French Branches) and a former full professor at the Université de Montréal.
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The Ububele Education and Psychoanalytic Trust's Work Wins The Sigourney Award – 2024
The Ububele Trust’s unique work expands accessibility and efficacy of psychoanalytic treatment in South Africa, addressing the country’s traumatic past and current uncertainties and challenges to personal relationships and mental health related to poverty, unemployment, poor infrastructure, and other crises.
Work by Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust Earns International Recognition With The Sigourney Award-2024
Ububele’s work imparts psychoanalytically informed healthy parent-child attachment through low-cost, replicable models in South Africa and earns The Sigourney Award-2024
Seattle, WA – Nov. 12, 2024 – Each year, The Sigourney Award bestows international recognition and a substantial cash prize for outstanding work completed within the past 10 years that advances psychoanalytic thought worldwide. A prestigious panel of judges carefully reviewed applicants from 10 countries across the globe and today, Robin A. Deutsch, PhD and Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, announces the not-for-profit Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust (Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa) as one of four international recipients presented the prestigious prize. The organization’s Executive Director Esther Chunga accepted the award on their behalf.
“The Ububele organization’s ingenious development of psychoanalytically informed interventions for highly vulnerable citizens supports Founder Mary Sigourney’s original intent to honor the application of psychoanalytic principles to better society,” says Dr. Deutsch.
The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust (Johannesburg, South Africa)
The Ububele Trust’s exceptional work expands the accessibility and efficacy of psychoanalytic treatment in South Africa, addressing the country’s traumatic past and current uncertainties, including major challenges to personal relationships and mental-health challenges related to poverty, unemployment, poor infrastructure, and other crises. The organization’s unique initiatives, centered on promoting healthy parent-child attachment, are low-cost, replicable models of psychoanalytically informed interventions including an emphasis on transference and appreciation for the influence of the unconscious.
Ububele’s approach is firmly rooted in the lived experiences of Johannesburg and Alexandra's community of over 500,000 people overburdened by harsh poverty, serious crime, corruption and the lesser recognized but lasting impact of apartheid. The Alexandra community’s critical mental health needs place a strain on mothers and caregivers who struggle to overcome historically deficient and discriminatory systems.
The organization most importantly trains intern psychologists and psychotherapists, and also extends capacity by educating social workers, nurses, lay counsellors (directly from the community), teachers and clinic staff. The education emphasizes the transference relationship and the necessity of working beyond the surface. This psychoanalytically informed psycho-emotional support gives children, young people and their caregivers the capability to succeed in life and break inter-generational cycles of emotional poverty and mental health despair. Specific programs include the Ububele Umdlezane Parent-Infant Programs focusing on the first thousand days of life and the Therapy and Assessment Clinic which conducts psychoeducational assessments and psychotherapy services. The Baby Mat Project offers post-partum parent-infant interventions to address anxieties, fantasies, and processes underlying parenting issues with therapeutic modalities including holding, containment, and engaging with the infant-mother as subject.
The Ububele Trust’s teachings reach a wide audience through professional lectures, media, and consultation with interventionists from across the world seeking to implement similar interventions in their settings, such as Pakistan. Their Home Visiting Project captured international attention when Rose Palmer, UK journalist and PhD student, produced the film 1001 Days (named for the critical infant development period) pertaining to infant mental health interventions in South Africa. The organization has also had a significant presence at the World Association for Infant Mental Health conference, the American Zero to Three Fellowship Program, and the International Developmental Pediatrics Association.
“It is an absolute honor for Ububele to be recognized with such a prestigious award. It is most affirming and validating of the work that we do and its undeniable importance as well as the relevance of psychoanalytic practice in marginalized communities,” says Esther Chunga, Executive Director for the not-for-profit.