Ellen Fertig, the distinguished former administrative director of the American Psychoanalytic Association, was named an honorary member at the January 2006 meeting in New York City. She retired in 2004. The Association grew tremendously during her leadership. She had exceptional skill and diplomacy in helping to guide the officers of the Association. Jon Meyer noted that, “Many presidents have commented that Ellen Fertig's skills as an advisor made a truly impossible job almost possible.”
Four others were named honorary members for their distinguished contributions to psychoanalysis. Susan Coates was recognized, the award states, for “her contributions to our understanding of gender development in early childhood and her subsequent work in trauma, attachment theory, and parent infant relationships.” She is a member of the teaching faculty of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.
David Pincus, a psychologist, is founder and director of the Cleveland Mind Brain Group, a monthly gathering of professionals from numerous fields who are devoted to cross-disciplinary learning about issues of mind, brain, and spirit. He was honored for “his dedication to consolidating the bridge between neuroscience and psychoanalysis.”
Paul Roazen was honored posthumously. As a profound intellectual historian and scholar, he wrote numerous biographies of noted psychoanalysts. He was a political scientist and chronicler of the development of psychoanalysis who explored Sigmund Freud's complex relationships with his family, students, and adherents. He was professor emeritus of social and political science at York University and adjunct professor of psychiatry at Tufts-New England Medical Center.
Jonathan Shedler is one of the outstanding academic psychoanalytic psychologists working today whose work is highly relevant clinically. The award of honorary membership reads, “Few in the psychoanalytic field have his talent for writing about research that assesses complex psychoanalytic constructs which provide the foundation for developing assessment instruments that can advance psychoanalytic knowledge.”
For exceptional dedication to APsaA, building the complex and undervalued liaisons with other professional organizations which strengthen the Association's presence in the world of ideas and action, Barbara Rosenfeld was presented with a Distinguished Service Award.
Alix Spiegel was presented the 2005 Excellence in Journalism Award for her article in the New Yorker magazine on the development, intellectual and pragmatic, of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Her detailed research spoke to the impact that one man, Robert Spitzer, had on revolutionizing the field of psychiatry.
Both the Hanna Perkins Center for Child Development in Cleveland and the Pacella Parent Child Center of the New York Psychoanalytic Center and Society were presented awards for Children and Family Community Service.
The Karl A. Menninger Memorial Award was presented to Jennifer Stuart for her paper, “The Experience of Conflict between Work and Motherhood: A Psychoanalytic Research Study.” “It doesn't matter whether a woman's mother worked outside the home or not,” says Stuart. “Working moms who have had warm, positive relationships with their own mothers tend to combine work and family with relative ease, taking pleasure from both their children and their work. Where there is intense, internal conflict in a woman's relationship with her mother, there is likely to be an intense struggle over work-family balance, whether or not she works outside the home after having children.”
The CORST Essay Prize in Psychoanalysis and Culture was presented to George Mashour for his essay, “Toward a General Theory of Unconscious Processes in Psychoanalysis and Anesthesiology.” He is a clinical fellow in anesthesia at Harvard Medical School.
The Edith Sabshin Awards for distinguished teaching honored Efrain Bleiberg (Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Society), Jennifer M. Bonovitz (Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia), Richard J. Kessler (Long Island Psychoanalytic Society), S. Kalman Kolansky (Baltimore Washington Center for Psychoanalysis), Stephen Rosenblum (Washington Psychoanalytic Society), Jan Van Schaik (Wisconsin Psychoanalytic Society), and James E. Wilson (Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis).
Adele Tutter was awarded the Affiliate Council Scientific Paper Prize for the essay “Medication as Object.” The runner-up was Susan Scheftel, for her paper, “The World of William Steig: A Creative Representation of Early Separation and Resiliency.”
Michael Slevin is editor of TAP.