Over two hundred invited guests attended the Fourth Annual Mary S. Sigourney Awards Dinner, held December 17 at New York's Waldorf-Astoria. Sponsored by the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine and the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, the event honored 1993 recipients Willy Baranger, Isidoro Berenstein, Max Hernandez, and Patrick Mahony. Bernard Pacella, president of The American and co-trustee of the Mary S. Sigourney Trust, has characterized the award as “the Nobel Prize of psychoanalysis.”
The trust was established in 1989 by a bequest of its eponymous benefactor, a marital and family counselor from California who had a passionate interest in psychoanalysis. Her bequest endowed in perpetuity an annual award or awards to be made to individuals or organizations who have made significant contributions to psychoanalysis over the preceding ten years. The terms of the trust, modified somewhat from the original bequest, stipulate that the awards be rotated geographically in three-year cycles, the first year's recipients to be from the United States, the second year's from Europe, and the third year's from the rest of the world. Because the original bequest was structured differently, recipients for the first two years were all from the United States. The awards can be given to individuals for original psychoanalytic work, scholarly achievement, contributions to the field of education, or significant influence in the field of psychoanalytic thought and practice. Psychoanalytic institutes and societies are eligible for the awards for outstanding achievement in psychoanalytic education and research. A panel of three judges, selected each year by the trustees, is charged with making nominations for the awards. The judges remain anonymous to all but the trustees, and do not confer with one another in making their recommendations. The trustees choose the winners based on these recommendations and determine the specific amount to be awarded.
Stephan Levitan, president of the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine, opened the awards ceremony by reviewing the history of the trust. He then introduced Roger MacKinnon, director of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, who welcomed the guests and introduced Dr. Pacella and cotrustee James Devine, who had been Ms. Sigourney's attorney.
Pacella began by welcoming Horacio Etchegoyen, current president of the International Psychoanalytical Association, and Joseph Sandler, IPA past president. Pacella then presented the awards and reviewed the honorees' achievements.
Willy Baranger, of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association, is one of the most widely respected senior analysts in Latin America. He has written extensively, often with his wife Madeleine Baranger, on the psychoanalytic situation and on the relation between Melanie Klein's theories and those of French psychoanalysis. He is considered one of the most outstanding scholars, educators, and clinicians in the Spanish-speaking analytic community.
Because Dr. Baranger was unable to attend, Susana Ferrer accepted the award for him. She conveyed his regrets at being unable to accept the award in person, and spoke of the important role he has played in the psychoanalytic movement in both Uruguay and Argentina.
Isidoro Berenstein, of the Psychoanalytic Association of Buenos Aires, is a distinguished theoretician, clinician, and author. He has done extensive work in the application of psychoanalytic theory to the understanding of the psychodynamics and treatment of couples and families, and has made original contributions to the psychoanalytic theory of group process. He has been instrumental in developing psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapeutic centers, and has contributed to the extension of psychoanalytic knowledge in the Hispanophone mental health community. He is known for his work as an outstanding clinical analyst and for his ability to apply psychoanalysis in other fields without diluting its essential concepts.
In accepting the award, Dr. Mahony said it encourages him to complete his lifetime project, which is to trace the workings of Freud's intellect and imagination, and to understand the patterns that can be discerned in his thinking regardless of specific content. In the service of this goal, he is carefully examining all of Freuds writings, including unpublished letters.
Each of the recipients will receive $15,000 from the Trust. The 1993 awards complete the first three-year geographical rotation, and in 1994 the awards will again be made to analysts or institutions in the United States.
In accepting the award, Dr. Berenstein spoke of the deep need for recognition we all feel in our work, and of how moved he was to be honored. He recalled a childhood memory of reading about the recipients of the Nobel Prize and imagining himself in their place; winning the award, he said, evoked in him again that childhood identification.
Max Hernandez, of the Peru Psychoanalytic Association, is an outstanding scholar, educator, and clinician who has written psychoanalytically based historical analyses of Latin American culture. His recent book on Garcilaso de la Vega, the early Peruvian historian known also as El Inca, has become a bestseller throughout Latin America and has contributed to the increased prestige of psychoanalysis in that culture. He has been an IPA vice-president and is one of the most respected leaders of the Latin American psychoanalytic community, highly regarded for his clinical depth and sensitivity. As Dr. Hernandez too was unable to attend, Moises Lemlij accepted the award for him.
Patrick Mahony, of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, is the author of significant contributions to the analysis of Freud's work, particularly the relation between Freud's clinical cases and the developmental steps in his theory formation. He has applied psycholinguistic analysis to the study of the relation between Freud's expository style and the specific content of his writings.