Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy of the Austen Riggs Center Wins The Sigourney Award-2021
The nonprofit Erikson Institute’s commitment to, and investment in providing public and professional education about psychoanalysis as a clinical discipline and an applied theory for understanding human experience earns The Sigourney Award-2021.
Work by Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy of the Austen Riggs Center Wins The Sigourney Award-2021
Seattle, WA — Nov. 18, 2021 – The Sigourney Award annually rewards achievements that advance psychoanalytic thought with international recognition and a substantial cash prize. This year’s distinguished panel of independent judges evaluated work submitted from five continents. Today, William A. Myerson, Ph.D., MBA, and co-trustee of The Sigourney Trust announces the Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy of the Austen Riggs Center’s work as one of three honored with The Sigourney Award-2021.
Work by the Erikson Institute for Education, Research, and Advocacy of the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts demonstrates a significant commitment to, and investment in providing public and professional education about psychoanalysis as a clinical discipline and an applied theory for understanding human experience. The work contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship within psychoanalysis, between psychoanalysis and other related fields, and provides incubator support for projects in applied psychoanalysis that range from responding to local needs of schools, children, and families to understanding international conflicts.
“Supporting Mary Sigourney’s intentions for the award, work by the Erikson Institute helps expand the beneficial elements of psychoanalytic thought to diverse communities around the world,” says William A. Myerson, Ph.D., MBA, the Trust’s psychoanalytic co-trustee. “Offering a focus on public outreach to youth and communities, and an innovative linking of the arts with mental health, especially important amidst the social isolation experienced during the pandemic, distinguishes this prize-winning work,” he adds.
The Erikson Institute’s focus on youth, linking access to the arts with mental health, is a noteworthy innovation that expands psychoanalytic thinking beyond traditional clinical and academic boundaries, particularly within the context of limited arts education in schools. Through its Erikson Scholar program, interdisciplinary scholars have been invited to Riggs for three- to four-month research-based intellectual and clinical immersion residencies. Research in psychoanalytic approaches to understanding suicide and personality, and advocacy for access to care with national impact are additional contributions.
Academically, in the past 10 years, 26 Erikson Scholars-in-residence and two Senior Erikson Scholars have been sponsored through the Erikson Scholar program. Additionally, the Erikson Institute created an institutional archive for the organization’s 2019 Centennial which includes manuscript collections from Otto Will, Robert Holt, and Erik Erikson now available to scholars for research. The Erikson Institute integrates psychoanalytic training, research, applied psychoanalysis, group dynamics, community outreach, advocacy for policy change supporting access to care, seeking maximal impact on the field and in the community.
Presenting its psychoanalytic identity in both clinical and public domains, the Erikson Institute has impacted new audiences through novel approaches. More than 1,000 visitors learned about the Center’s history of hospital-based psychoanalytic treatment in the context of North American mental health through a public exhibition in 2019. The Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media further reaches new audiences by recognizing writers, filmmakers, and journalists for coverage of mental health topics, providing a public forum for prize recipients to discuss their work. And the Arts in Mind program and Creativity Seminars explore the connection between the arts and mental health, expanding reach beyond traditional clinical and academic boundaries.
“Our mission is to preserve a space for learning that is linked to historical psychoanalysis while joining contemporary scholarship and advances in the field to make a difference in the world beyond the small number of patients we treat,” says Jane G. Tillman, PhD., accepting the Award on behalf of the nonprofit. “We strive to make psychoanalytic concepts accessible, relevant, interesting, and applicable to a wide range of problems and settings, and by winning The Sigourney Award-2021, our portfolio of psychoanalytic education, research, and advocacy is strengthened, and gains increased public awareness,” she adds.
This winning work for The Sigourney Award-2021 adds to a long list of innovative contributions advancing psychoanalytic thought that, since 1990, have been honored with the independent prize. This year, work by Argentinian Dr. Jorge Claudio Ulnik and Maryland-based physician-psychoanalysts Dr. David Scharff and Dr. Jill Savege Scharff was also rewarded.
Look for this year’s award-winning work introduced through individual videos on The Sigourney Award website in early 2022. Applications for The Sigourney Award-2022 will be accepted in March 2022 for work completed between 2011 and 2021. The Sigourney Award includes a substantial cash prize.
David Scharff And Jill Savege Scharff Wins The Sigourney Award-2021
Dr. David Scharff and Dr. Jill Savege Scharff’s work adapting psychoanalysis for those far from a psychoanalytic center and educating analysts to address remote treatment needs earns The Sigourney Award-2021.
David Scharff And Jill Savege Scharff’s Work In International Psychoanalytic Tele-Analysis And Training Wins The Sigourney Award-2021
Seattle, WA — Nov. 18, 2021 – The Sigourney Award annually rewards outstanding work that advances psychoanalytic thought and practice with international recognition and a substantial cash prize. This year submissions from five continents were evaluated by a distinguished panel of independent judges. Today, William A. Myerson, Ph.D., MBA, and psychoanalyst co-trustee of The Sigourney Trust, announces that the innovative international tele-analysis and training work by Drs. David Scharff and Jill Savege Scharff, physician-psychoanalysts, is one of three meriting The Sigourney Award-2021.
The Maryland-based partners’ work adapts psychoanalytic thinking and practice for those far from a psychoanalytic center and educates analysts on how to provide remote treatment. Embracing teaching at the heart of their work, the Scharffs’ remote teaching and treatment efforts were accomplished in large part through the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) they co-founded, and as Supervising Analysts at the International Institute for Psychoanalytic Training (IIPT at IPI) and Teaching Analysts at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute.
“Modifying teaching and treatment delivery systems, and publishing our interpretation of projection of resistance, transference and countertransference onto technology, prepared reluctant analysts for teletherapy during COVID-19,” says Dr. David Scharff.
To accomplish this, the Scharffs developed an innovative, analytic training methodology and paved a non-traditional path to deliver analysis remotely. The new training methodology allowed the application of psychoanalytic approaches to family and couple psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, while their early adoption of technology expanded access to psychoanalytic psychotherapy in areas and countries previously beyond reach.
“The pioneering vision to expand psychoanalytic psychotherapy into geographic areas not previously reached by clinicians working psychoanalytically, and to work with psychoanalytically-oriented clinicians who were initially reluctant to accept teletherapy, supports the mission of the Award’s founder, Mary Sigourney. Her intent was to reward innovative advancement of psychoanalytic thought and practice,” says Barbara Sherland, The Sigourney Trust attorney co-trustee.
“The international dissemination of psychoanalysis’ value with family and couple psychotherapy further supports the work’s recognition,” notes Dr. Myerson.
Long before the pandemic forced psychoanalytic clinicians to endorse remote learning and service delivery, the Scharffs’ work employed videoconference technology in certificate programs that have reached psychoanalytically oriented trainees in the United States, China, Russia, and Latin America, with additional programming that enabled them to reach trainees and colleagues in such locations as Greece, Austria, South Africa, New Zealand, and Israel. Their books and articles have reached a worldwide audience through translations into Chinese, Russian, German, Korean, Japanese, French, Italian, and Spanish, while their contribution to the dissemination of free e-books in psychotherapy, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis expanded access to psychoanalytic literature for readers in 200 countries and territories.
“David and I have the broader community in mind, locally and internationally and continue to value individual analysis and training,” says Dr. Jill Savege Scharff. “Applying this to child, couple, and family therapy, especially in geographical areas such as China and Russia where there is reduced access to analysis and its applications, as well as to theatre, further defines our work,” she added.
This award-winning work joins a long list of innovative contributions advancing psychoanalytic thought that, since 1990, have been honored with this independent prize. Work by Argentinian Dr. Jorge Claudio Ulnik and the Massachusetts-based nonprofit, Erikson Institute For Education, Research, and Advocacy of the Austen Riggs Center, is also being rewarded in 2021.
Watch for individual videos featuring The Sigourney Award-2021 award recipients’ work on The Sigourney Award website in early 2022. Applications for The Sigourney Award-2022 will be accepted beginning in March 2022 for work completed between 2011 and 2021. The Sigourney Award includes a substantial cash prize.
Patricia Gherovici, PhD, Wins Sigourney Award 2020
Psychoanalyst Patricia Gherovici’s work with Latinx and nonconforming gender people earns The Sigourney Award-2020 prize for psychoanalytic achievement. Dr. Gherovici’s work in the US earns the independent prize recognizing contributions to advancing psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thought alongside work from Mexico and South Africa.
Psychoanalyst Patricia Gherovici’s Work With Latinx And Nonconforming Gender People Earns The Sigourney Award-2020 Prize For Psychoanalytic Achievement
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Dr. Gherovici’s work in the US earns the independent prize recognizing contributions to advancing psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thought alongside work from Mexico and South Africa.
Seattle, WA — January 13, 2020 – The Sigourney Award-2020 annually rewards top work that advanced the field of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thought, and this year a distinguished panel of independent judges reviewed an unprecedented number of applications from 13 countries. Today, William A. Myerson, Ph.D., MBA, and co-trustee of The Sigourney Trust announces four winners for The Sigourney Award-2020, including the work of Patricia Gherovici, Ph.D.
Dr. Patricia Gherovici is a psychoanalyst who serves as Associated Faculty for the Psychoanalytic Studies Minor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder and director of the Philadelphia Lacan Group. Originally from Argentina, Dr. Gherovici’s work with marginalized communities began with Latinx and expanded to include gender and sexual variant people. Addressing the complexities of delivering mental health services to disenfranchised and/or impoverished communities, her work is at the forefront of a change within psychoanalysis. In a departure from traditional psychoanalysis, the new form of psychoanalytic practice she has been developing is oriented toward progressive social transformations for people segregated by “oppressive notions of normalcy.” Before most people within psychoanalysis were thinking about speaking about intersectionality, Dr. Gherovici was working to illuminate how race, trans and queer studies intersected problematically with psychoanalysis. Her work with trans and gender nonconforming analysands has contributed to the emerging new field “transpsychoanalytics.”
“Dr. Gherovici’s work supports Award founder Mary Sigourney’s goal of rewarding innovation in the field that advances psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thought to benefit humanity,” says Dr. Myerson.
Her award-winning book The Puerto Rican Syndrome (2010) opened a more sustained conversation about psychoanalysis and community and directly inspired collective work such as the 2014 Symposium: Psychoanalysis in El Barrio at the New School for Social Research, as well as the PEP WEB documentary Psychoanalysis in El Barrio (2016) and her co-edited collection Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class and the Unconscious (2019). She also authored Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism (2017). All of these works challenged the assumption that psychoanalysis is only effective for those who can afford it, directly referencing her work, which advocates for transcending barriers of money, class, gender, sexuality and race.
“I am honored to be selected as a winner of [The Sigourney Award-2020]. After years of listening to marginalized people who did not feel heard and pushing for their inclusion within psychoanalysis, I hope this award will lend visibility to the efficacy and emancipatory potential of psychoanalysis for Latinx and gender nonconforming communities.,” says Dr. Gherovici. “For a long time, I have been saying that psychoanalysis needs a sex-change. It also needs a social change. The recognition granted by this distinction proves that this change is happening. I would like to express my gratitude to the panel of judges and to The Sigourney Trust for their commitment to improving the world through psychoanalysis and for their support of my vision,” she adds.
The winning work of 2020 adds to a long list of innovative contributions advancing psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thought that, since 1990, have been honored with The Sigourney Award. This year, three additional prizes were awarded to recognize work by Anton Oscar Kris, M.D., professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a psychoanalyst, Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society, and past Executive Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives; Heli Rafael Morales Ascencio, Ph.D., founder of the Social Foundation of Psychoanalysis in Mexico City, Mexico and a founding member of three movements on psychoanalysis including the School of Psychoanalytic Letter, the Psychoanalysis Social, and The Lacanian Analytical Network; and the South African Psychoanalytical Association (SAPA), a nonprofit organization based in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa.
“Our judges were incredibly impressed by the breadth of work submitted for consideration this year, and we’re proud of the ground-breaking contributions and exceptional advancements in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thought that earned The Sigourney Award-2020,” says Barbara Sherland, J.D., co-trustee, The Sigourney Trust.
The Sigourney Award-2021 applications will be accepted online beginning March 2021. The Sigourney Award evaluates work completed within the recent 10 years, and applicants whose work does not win are welcome to enter again. The Sigourney Award includes a substantial cash prize. Visit www.sigourneyaward.org for information and stay updated via social platforms for The Sigourney Award on Facebook and LinkedIn @SigourneyAward.
About The Sigourney Award
The Sigourney Trust, an independent nonprofit organization established by Mary Sigourney in 1989, bestows annually The Sigourney Award as international recognition and reward for outstanding work that advanced psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thought. Ms. Sigourney was a psychotherapist, publisher, and community activist who had a passionate interest in psychoanalysis and understood its ability to benefit and extend human conversation across various disciplines. To date, 133 Award Recipients from 22 countries represent her global vision. The Sigourney Award recipients’ ground-breaking work has significantly contributed to human affairs on topics ranging from clinical psychoanalysis, neuroscience, feminism, and political oppression.