Joerg Bose, Nancy McWilliams, and Charles B. Strozier were inducted as honorary members of APsaA on January 17, 2007, at the Association's Winter Meeting at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York. Lynne Moritz, president, presented the awards that acknowledge each individual's considerable and meaningful contribution to psychoanalysis.
Joerg Bose was honored “in recognition of his stellar leadership in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic service in the country and in the world; and as director of the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology for his leadership in the development of a model clinic which has served its community for more than 50 years.” In 2003, he made a presentation to the United Nations Department of Public Information entitled, “On Human Dignity, Lost and Regained.” Under his direction, the White Institute garnered the first APsaA Psychoanalytic Community Service Clinic of the Year Award and received the prestigious Sigourney Award as an exemplary center for psychoanalysis. Bose serves as a clinical associate professor at Columbia University in New York.
Bose said that becoming “an honorary member of the Association is personally gratifying but also has a larger meaning as a sign of an ongoing rapprochement between White and the Association. While we share a history of some strife, more and more this is now giving way to a relationship of mutual recognition, respect, and collaboration. The public may not know it but there is a new spirit that infuses our field. We have come to appreciate the pluralism in psychoanalysis today not as a sign of its fragmentation and disunity but of its richness and creativity. We need to unite to have more influence on legislation that affects us and to explore together how we can demonstrate to the world that we are alive and well.”
Bose took his training and certification in psychoanalysis at the White, was appointed a training analyst there in 1990, and has been director since 2000. Aided by the exceptional skills of Bose in relationship building, the White and APsaA have reached a new frontier with the representation of official but non-voting representatives of the White Institute and Society on the APsaA Board and Council respectively.
Nancy McWilliams was recognized for “her many contributions to psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic frameworks through her own writings, and especially as associate editor of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, and [for] the interface she so eloquently has built between psychoanalysis and the broader psychiatric and even broader mental health world.” McWilliams has contributed greatly to psychoanalytic treatment through her books, including Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process (1994) and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner's Guide (2004). The Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (2006), for which she was an associate editor, is an 800-page compendium of psychoanalytic case formulation. McWilliams's book Psychoanalytic Case Formulation (1999) received the Gradiva Award for best psychoanalytic clinical book of the year. She is president-elect of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association and teaches at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
McWilliams holds a Ph.D. in psychology from Rutgers and serves on the faculty of the Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy of New Jersey. In nominating her, Bob Wallerstein emphasized, “Dr. McWilliams's deep psychoanalytic knowledge, her capacity to expound that knowledge in clear prose without jargon, and her personal qualities make working with her…an unalloyed pleasure.” Stanley Greenspan noted that McWilliams's contributions to the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual have been immeasurable. Recently, McWilliams agreed to serve as an advisor to APsaA's 10,000 Minds Project, the outreach program to undergraduate education and to help forge a relationship between this project and Division 39 of the American Psychological Association.
Charles B. Strozier was recognized for “his many scholarly contributions enriched with a psychoanalytic perspective, including his biographies of Abraham Lincoln and Heinz Kohut as well as his 1994 book, Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America, which was the first psychological study of the phenomenon, and for his impressive creativity.” Strozier is director of the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College in New York and is currently writing The Trestles of Death: The World Trade Center Disaster and the Apocalyptic.
In accepting the award, Strozier commented, “This is an incredibly meaningful honor. In addition, it allows me to feel part of the larger psychoanalytic community. The study of fundamentalism is an important one and one to which psychoanalysts have a particular contribution to make—understanding the deeper sources of contemporary violence.”
Strozier has had a career as a professor of history, a practicing psychotherapist, an author, and a mentor to many researchers and students. Strozier first trained as a research candidate at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and then did further study at the Training and Research Institute of Self Psychology in New York. Throughout his career, Strozier's work has been distinguished by his creativity and his unfailing commitment to psychoanalytic thought, enriching both history and psychoanalysis. He is the recipient of the 2005 Goethe Award for psychoanalytic scholarship.
Maxine Gann Ph.D. sees Adolescents and adults in Manhattan. A member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, she teaches and supervises in the Psychology Internship and the Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Programs, and is a research therapist in a multisite evaluation of psychodynamic treatment of panic disorder.