Dr. Paula Christian-Kliger’s Interdisciplinary Work Bringing Psychoanalysis into Social and Institutional Change Wins The Sigourney Award-2026
San Francisco, CA – Nov. 10, 2026 – Work by Paula Christian-Kliger, PhD, ABPP (New York, USA) is being recognized with The Sigourney Award-2026 for outstanding achievements that advance psychoanalytic thought, according to Robin A. Deutsch, PhD, Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust. Her work was one of four selected for the Award’s international recognition after an anonymous panel of distinguished judges reviewed a record number of applications from 23 countries.
“Dr. Christian-Kliger’s work directly supports our founder’s vision. It shows how psychoanalytic thought becomes not only a treatment method, but a practice that enriches human experience and transforms how people lead, learn, repair, and evolve,” says Deutsch.
Dr. Paula Christian-Kliger’s extraordinary interdisciplinary work demonstrates the transformative potential of psychoanalytic ideas far beyond the clinic. A psychoanalyst, author, and artist, she has developed a relational, trauma-informed model grounded in humanistic and Buddhist practices that brings psychic and emotional layers of experience into view. Her reach is broad: intensive clinical treatment for young adults and families; leadership work in Fortune 500 companies and professional organizations that deepens self-awareness and strengthens attunement, partnering, and collaboration; and experiential life-skills learning for neurodiverse youth. Through art-informed experiences rooted in history and origin stories, her work invites self-reflection and dialogue across race, gender, class, culture, and generations, among leaders and communities, while empowering those long-unseen and unheard. Uniting these efforts is psychoanalytic presence in action: creating emotionally alive spaces where people learn to stay with what has felt unbearable, recognize unconscious patterns, and move toward empathy, repair, and shared humanity.
Before becoming a psychologist and psychoanalyst, Christian-Kliger was a singer, songwriter, and performer. Entertaining troops in Vietnam with the USO introduced her to trauma and new cultures, and inspired her move into psychology without leaving her art behind. Today, her poetry, figurative art, and psychoanalytic engagement with music and film invite communities toward change and hope. Her public-facing work includes the award-winning book Power Your Heart, You Power Your Mind: Self-Study Then Build a Bridge to Someone (2018), the We Are Human First podcast, a psychoanalytically informed art exhibition, and community dialogues. Christian-Kliger also edited We Are Human First: Black Psychoanalysts Write, a special issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry which includes the “Holmes Commission Leadership” conversation. Her published papers extend psychoanalysis into transgenerational history, trauma, race, the social unconscious, and repair, including “Reflections on Anti-Racism in Psychoanalysis” in Contemporary Psychoanalysis.
At the Harlem Family Institute, she has led the Psychoanalytic Renaissance talk series on psychoanalysis and diversity and helped create Harlem Family Services’ subsidiary, The Margaret Morgan Lawrence Center for Family and Child Development, a mental health clinic in Harlem licensed under Article 31 by the New York State Office of Mental Health. There, experienced psychoanalysts and psychodynamic psychotherapists serve children, families, adults, and the wider community affected by, or at risk of, historical and ongoing stress-based trauma.
“Psychoanalysis helps us explore what keeps history alive within us: our beliefs, identities, traumas, and losses, and the love, hate, and certainty that shape our stories. My work brings these layers into view so that we can learn from one another,” says Christian-Kliger, founder and president of PsychAssets and Kliger Consulting Group.
“Dr. Christian-Kliger encourages people to study themselves, listen across differences, learn how to share power, and build more humane relational cultures. She brings psychoanalysis alive as it helps us move from ‘I’ toward ‘we’ without erasing difference,” says Michael J. Harrington, JD, Attorney Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust.
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