The American Psychoanalytic Association and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association were recently the recipients of two important and anonymous gifts. Both bequests were made through Harold P. Blum, M.D., Editor of the Journal. The two donors are not known to each other, Dr. Blum disclosed, nor did each know of the other's intention or gift.
The first donation consisted of a complete set of first editions of Sigmund Freud as well as first editions of the works of many other pioneer psychoanalysts such as Abraham, Ferenczi, Rank and Jung. This valuable gift was designed to honor psychoanalytic study. Altogether there are 105 rare books and manuscripts in the collection, of which the first editions of the 1895 Breuer-Freud Studien über Hysterie and Die Traumdeutung (1900) are perhaps the most notable. Kenneth Calder has appointed an Ad Hoc Committee on Psychoanalytic Classics, chaired by Robert Grayson, which will make arrangements for housing the collection and administering access to the works.
Following their installation in a custom-built cabinet, these classics will be on display in the American Psychoanalytic Association's Central Office in New York City. They will be made available upon special request from those wishing to study the original German texts. The well-known book dealer who appraised this collection wrote, “Your collection is, no doubt, one of the most significant in its field, containing, as it does, all or nearly all of the major works in the field of psychoanalysis, including some publications of utmost rarity.”
The second donation is a $30,000.00 cash gift to the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association to provide a special Editor's Fund for the advancement of psychoanalytic scholarship. This money is the beginning of an endowment for the Journal, and will be used to award two separate prizes each year, valued up to $500 each, for excellence in psychoanalytic scholarship and creativity. These prizes will be awarded in two separate categories.
The first category will be a clinical essay prize which is designed to encourage the utilization and publication of students' clinical case reports, for example, from supervised cases. Only candidates and those who have graduated within two years will be eligible to compete. The editors of the Journal feel that students and recent graduates often have excellent source material for original clinical contributions.
The other prize will be awarded for the paper containing the most outstanding original contribution in any area relevant to psychoanalysis. This category will have no other requirements as to author or subject. The Journal will only make these awards in any year that they receive papers of sufficient merit. The prize papers will be printed in the Journal, and it is planned that the awards will be made with a citation and a scroll at the annual meeting of members of the association.