Four Recipients’ Work From Israel, Sweden, Canada and South Africa Earns The Sigourney Award-2024

SEATTLE, Nov. 12, 2024 /CNW/ — The Sigourney Award Trust annually recognizes outstanding work that advances psychoanalytic thought and principles throughout the world. Robin A. Deutsch, PhD and Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, today announces three individuals and one organization whose work of the past decade earns The Sigourney Award-2024 and a substantial cash prize. Recipients include: Merav Roth, PhD (Tel Aviv, Israel); Björn Salomonsson, MD (Stockholm, Sweden); Dominique Scarfone, MD (Montreal, Canada); and The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust (Johannesburg, South Africa).

“The 2024 recipients’ work has uniquely and positively impacted populations, including the youngest among us, by expanding access and understanding of psychoanalysis as well as psychotherapy’s benefits to professionals and the general public,” says Dr. Deutsch. “The anonymous judges, who likewise conduct exemplary professional careers, evaluated work from 10 countries to select work that most closely aligned with Mary Sigourney’s original intent.”

Founded by Mary Sigourney in 1989, The Sigourney Award was established to recognize and promote exceptional work that advances psychoanalytic principles and their ability to better humankind.

Work Meriting The Sigourney Award-2024 (Alphabetical order)

Merav Roth, PhD (Tel Aviv, Israel)
Prof. Merav Roth’s exceptional interdisciplinary work included an unparalleled approach to psychoanalysis and literature, which gave readers a better understanding of the deep psychic processes involved in reading and earned her a reputation as a pioneering psychoanalytic thinker. Her notable work also expands to her impactful role as a writer and activist on trauma, ethics and culture in Israel and abroad.  Accomplishments in the past decade include her first book, A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature – Reading the Reader (Routledge, 2020), where she described the unconscious processes involved in reading literature. As the former chair of the psychoanalytic psychotherapy program at Tel Aviv University, Roth established and still chairs “The Clinic For All” which provides pro-bono psychotherapy for deprived or disadvantaged populations. As a professor at the University of Haifa, Roth established a new philanthropic initiative, “Interweaving,” a culturally sensitive clinic for disadvantaged populations. Following the events of October 7 in Israel, Roth’s psychoanalytic work with trauma was swiftly employed to provide guidance and wide-reaching help, including establishing with two colleagues a philanthropic network of 450 psychoanalysts who provide long-term pro-bono support to survivors and their family members.

Björn Salomonsson, MD (Stockholm, Sweden)
Dr. Björn Salomonsson’s work has profoundly amplified psychoanalytic knowledge and infant caretaking techniques, and engaged non-psychoanalytic healthcare professionals participating in pre-, peri-, and post-natal care of mothers and infants. An Associate Professor at Swedish Psychoanalytic Institute, Salomonsson combined training in psychoanalysis and research to improve the early life of distressed babies by wholly refining Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy (PIP) methodology. He also co-founded The A Primo Foundation, with successful courses for nurses, midwives and psychologists in Maternity Units and Child Health Centers. His work pioneered psychoanalytic techniques for working directly with child health nurses who had little to no prior psychoanalytic exposure. Nurses used the techniques to address perturbed infant-parent relationships and creatively and respectfully bring a psychoanalytic understanding of the infant’s and parents’ experience of troubled relationships. In his book Psychodynamic Interventions in Pregnancy and Infancy (2018), Salomonsson systematically describes how a therapist can practice treatment beyond the one-to-one model and deliver a multi-relationship-based psychoanalytic therapy model by actively engaging the infant during psychoanalytic therapy. Today, PIP is viewed as highly relevant for every analyst.

Dominique Scarfone, MD (Montreal, Canada)  
Prof. Dominique Scarfone’s influential work has advanced a veritable renaissance in the study and transmission of French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche’s work and produced essential theoretical contributions in unconscious communication, temporality, and the translational model of the psyche. Providing a new approach to Freudian thinking, his endeavors bridge French, British and North American psychoanalytic culture. Scarfone’s work demonstrates how the marriage of tradition with radical thinking can expand the field of psychoanalysis. While maintaining a solid belief that Freud’s foundational method offers a common ground between these cultures, he has urged persistent questioning and reconsidering of Freud’s methods to liberate new thinking. Scarfone has illuminated a modern approach to how the psychosexual enters all these domains through work addressing clinical matters, questions of transference and repetition, one’s relationship to art and ethics, and the deep complexity of what it means to be human. Within the past ten years Scarfone has published three significant books including Laplanche (2014), The Unpast (2015), and The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche (2023).

The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust (Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa)
The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust’s outstanding work addresses the country’s traumatic past and current uncertainties, major challenges to personal relationships, mental-health challenges related to poverty, unemployment, poor infrastructure, and other crises by ingeniously magnifying the accessibility and efficacy of psychoanalytic treatment in South Africa. Ububele’s approach is rooted in the lived experiences of Johannesburg and Alexandra’s community of over 500,000 people overburdened by harsh poverty, serious crime, corruption and the lesser recognized but lasting impact of apartheid. An essential awareness and acknowledgement of transference and the influence of the unconscious informs unique initiatives centered on promoting healthy parent-child attachment through the development of low-cost, replicable models of psychoanalytically informed interventions. Two examples include the Ububele Umdlezane Parent-Infant Programs focused on the first thousand days of life and the Therapy and Assessment Clinic which conducts psychoeducational assessments and psychotherapy services. Ububele’s capacity building methods offer initial and continuing training emphasizing the transference relationship and the necessity of working beyond the surface. The training provides youth and caregivers the psychoanalytically informed psycho-emotional support needed to succeed in breaking inter-generational cycles of emotional poverty and mental health despair. 

“The Sigourney Award’s canons are unwavering and the Trust works tirelessly to ensure that Mary Sigourney’s intent is honored with a wholly independent assessment of exceptional work with each year’s Awards. We are fortunate to attract applications and nominations from around the world representing ground-breaking work that has advanced psychoanalytic thought and principles,” says Michael J. Harrington, JD, Attorney Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust.

Visit The Sigourney Award to review all recipients’ announcements. Applications for The Sigourney Award-2025 open March 1, 2025 for qualifying work completed between 2015-2024. Follow social platforms on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn @SigourneyAward, and X @sigourney_the.

About The Sigourney Award
The Sigourney Award Trust, a wholly independent nonprofit organization established by Mary Sigourney in 1989, annually bestows The Sigourney Award as international recognition and reward for outstanding work that has advanced psychoanalytic principles. 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. Since 1990, The Sigourney Award has rewarded and promoted outstanding work. To date, 149 Award recipients from 22 countries represent her global vision. Judges of The Sigourney Award remain anonymous to ensure an unbiased and thorough evaluation practice. Work honored by The Sigourney Award has significantly contributed to human affairs on topics ranging from clinical psychoanalysis, neuroscience, feminism, and political oppression.

Media Contact: Kelly Wisecarver, kelly@wisecarverpr.com

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