2019 Award Recipients

Lifetime Achievement & Clinical Writing

Lifetime Achievement Awards are given to members who have made outstanding contributions to the field of psychoanalytic social work and psychoanalysis. The Professional Clinical Writing Award is given to a member who has made outstanding contributions to the field through their professional clinical publications. Awards are presented by those who are close to the recipients.

Awardees
• Cathy Siebold
• Heather Craige
• Joan Berzoff
• Susan Sherman

Presented during the 2019 Conference
Intrigue, Insight, Inquiry: Through Today's Psychoanalytic Lens.

Lifetime Achievement Award — Recipient: Cathy Siebold, DSW, LCSW.
Introduction Presented by Susan Sherman, DSW:

Anyone who knows Cathy Siebold knows that if you want to get something done, she is your go-to person. She is both a thinker and a doer. It is often impossible to find that combination in one person. She takes on daunting jobs with ease and grace. She does everything thoughtfully but swiftly, efficiently, effectively. She does all these things with humor and with warmth. She is the consummate clinician and teacher. She is an exceptional colleague and friend.

We would have to spend the entire afternoon together (and I don’t want to be pulled off the stage with music like at the Academy Awards -- they would probably have to play “My Way”), if I were to tell you ALL of Cathy’s training, diverse work experience, her multiple publications, organizational and teaching experience. But I will highlight a few.

Cathy received a master's degree from NYU School of Social Work and her doctorate in social work from the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University. She earned her certificate in Psychoanalysis from the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis.

Cathy's very first social work job was as a director (of course she started at the top!) of the Hampton Bays Youth Organization in her hometown. She went on to do what we then called psychiatric social work in a variety of settings with developmentally disabled adults, in foster care, with the elderly, in hospice care. Her interest in working with terminally ill patients led to her dissertation: The Hospice Movement: Idealized Concepts. Reality and her book: The Hospice Movement: Easing Death's Pains.

As she began her private practice, first with a specialization in dying, death and grief, she also wished to pursue an academic career. She first taught Social Welfare and Methods of Social Work Practice at Penn State, then went on to be a professor at the University of Southern Maine, teaching the whole gamut of courses in social work practice. As she moved from Maine to Boston and then to New Jersey and New York the latter to join her husband, Bill, in his biotech career. She then taught at Smith, Rutgers, and NYU in their social work programs as well as in psychoanalytic institutes: at her alma mater, Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis; at the NJ Training Institute for Psychoanalysis and currently, happily for me, at the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center.

Always up for a challenge, Cathy is also on the faculty of the China American Psychoanalytic Alliance where she both supervises candidates and conducts psychoanalysis with Chinese candidates by Skype!

But wait, I have not even mentioned her extensive organizational work, including being the past president of AAPCSW after serving on every possible committee of our organization. (Whew!) She volunteers or is elected to many boards because of her outstanding leadership skills; supreme work ethic; and have I mentioned? her ability to get the job done! Throughout these leadership positions, her integrity, her fierce moral compass and kindness permeate all she does.

Cathy's publications are numerous and span many topics and interests, all pursued with her keen and curious mind: a few titles: “What do Patients want: Intersubjectivity”; “The Analyst's Desire: Some Reflections”; “Every Time We Say Good Bye: Forced Termination Revisited”; “The Plight of the Adult Adoptee: A Case of Kinship Adoption; Love and Desire”; “Tolerating and Understanding Sexual Feelings in the therapeutic Dyad”; “Female Sexual Agency: Evolving Psychoanalytic Ideas.” Truly, I am just naming a few. And is there any subject she does not think about?

But lest you think of Cathy as merely an intellectual and leader, let me end my tribute with more about her humanity and personhood. She is one of five children and a wonderful daughter to her 92 year old father. She is a terrific wife and step-mother. And step-mother hardly describes who she has been for Hannah and Quinn. And Hannah is with her today. Cathy is an incredible friend and colleague: always there to help when help is needed. Her energy and willingness to jump in and solve a problem is legion. I don't think Cathy ever sleeps because she has read every book one can imagine-she needs a bookcase of her own at our local library. She is so much fun and never says no to anything. She loves Irish theater, running, cooking, watching British mysteries, and traveling with her lovely husband, Bill and Hannah.

I give you Cathy Siebold. I can think of no one more deserving of AAPCSW's Lifetime Achievement Award! March 30, 2019

Lifetime Achievement Award — Recipient: Heather Craige, MSW, LCSW.
Introduction Presented by Christine Erskine, LCSW:

The recipient of this Lifetime Achievement Award is indeed an amazing social worker, teacher, supervisor, consultant, organizer, woman, wife, mom, -- and friend! She has twice been named Social Worker of the Year by the NC Society for Clinical Social Work. And for good reason:

After earning her MSW at the UNC School of social Work, she went to DC with her husband, civil rights attorney Burton Craige, and became the Director of the Christ Child School Counseling Program. While there she completed a post-graduate program in child and adolescent psychotherapy at the Washington School of Psychiatry. Back in North Carolina, she has been treating adults and children in Raleigh since 1984, and was a founding member of the Board of the Lucy Daniels Foundation, where she coordinated the Foundation's psychoanalytic treatment program for creative writers.

When I first met Heather, in 1990, I already knew of her because of what she was already doing for psychoanalytic social work in the Triangle area. But she had a two-year-old at that point, and her appearance in my living room was the first time we'd met in person. I was offering a short course to social workers, an introduction to the ideas of Melanie Klein, having myself traveled to the Washington School of Psychiatry to learn theory that was not being taught here then. Heather stayed after class for a bit, and we discovered that we had both grown up with music. During high school, Heather had majored in classical piano at the New York City School for the Performing Arts, while growing up in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn. By the time Heather left my home that evening, she had recruited me to work with her on establishing what, within just a couple of years, became the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center of North Carolina. “We need a program here where these newer theories can be taught,” she said. And here's the important part: She added: “And here's how you can do it.” And, indeed, we taught Kleinian theory in that program.

Organizing people to establish much-needed educational programs is Heather's particular forte. In fact, you might not want to look too relaxed or idle around her, because you can bet she'll have in mind something you can do with your time and energy. And speaking of energy, I don't know many people who have more of that than Heather Craige! With a four-year-old at home, Heather entered analytic training and was the first social worker to graduate from what was then the Duke-UNC Psychoanalytic Education Program. For her graduation paper, she interviewed 121 psychoanalytic candidates following the end of their psychoanalytic treatment and wrote a paper on the post-termination phase of psychoanalysis that was published in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Later developments of the paper were published in Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Psychoanalytic Inquiry.

As a faculty member, now, at the Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas, Heather teaches courses that regularly cause a visible spike in the enrollment charts: courses in relational and attachment theories, on trauma and the body, and one entitled “Attachment and Psychoanalysis: On Restoring the Capacity for Secure Love in Adult Psychotherapy.” In the last couple of decades, Heather has done more to make psychoanalytic education available to North Carolina's Clinical Social Workers than anyone else I know, not only through her own elective courses, but also by organizing an annual sponsorship by the PCC of the attachment-based Circle of Security training for child and parent workers in various settings. Currently, through her wise and generous financial and organizing contributions, she is even now showing us the pathway into the new world of marketing and communication.

This may be a Lifetime Achievement Award, but Heather shows no signs yet of slowing down – tho' she keeps threatening to retire – so we may have to come up with a new kind of Award for her in another decade – something like “The Three-or-Four Lifetimes Achievement Award”!

Congratulations, and our profound thanks to you, Heather! March 30, 2019

Professional Clinical Writing Award — Recipient: Joan Berzoff, EdD, MSW.
Introduction Presented by Beth Kita, PhD, LCSW:

Certainly Dr. Joan Berzoff's 7 books, 23 chapters, and 40 papers written, 181 international and national presentations given, 22 grants granted, and approximately 101 courses taught over the past 30 years have helped innumerable social workers to develop their capacities to think, and to think with feeling, about their clinical work from a psychodynamic and relational perspective –-- and yet, I still can't help but feel that she wrote everything just for me. Joan, you have had such an incredible influence on my development as a thinker and as a human, I am so lucky to have you as a mentor, colleague, and friend. Thank you for the opportunity to say that out loud to a room full of your peers.

Joan's work hardly needs an introduction. Through her writing, she has made psychodynamic thinking reachable to generations of social workers and clinicians, and has also made it irrefutable that such thinking is relevant to any and all settings in which human beings strive to help other human beings heal. The essayist EB White once said that Henry David Thoreau appeared to have been “torn by two powerful and opposing drives – the desire to enjoy the world, and the urge to set the world straight.” Leave it to Joan to turn that either/or into a both/and. Her writing reaches her readers because of the way that she so clearly enjoys thinking about psychodynamic theory and practice while also imploring us to use it to get to work on setting the world straight. Joan's capacity to write and to write with feeling, to seamlessly integrate theory with practice, to link practice with self, and connect self with society is remarkable, yet her influence on so many of us is also a result of the way in which she insists that these ideas belong to everyone – a democratic psychoanalysis in which all are truly welcome. And if she finds that anyone has been left out of the theory, well, she just insists that the theory to make some room at the table, and pulls up a chair (and will of course also make sure that everyone gets enough to eat).

I once asked Joan about what it was - of all of her many accomplishments, experiences, and opportunities – that she felt most proud. She said that it had to be, without a doubt, hands-down, no question, being a mom. Anyone who knows Joan knows Zeke and Jake, and how much she loves, respects and feels genuinely excited about them as human beings. We are lucky that part of Joan's love for them includes loving the world around them, and that the care, curiosity and excitement she feels for the development and growth of her own children extends to everyone else's. This ethos is in her heart and comes across in her writing.

Howard Thurman said, “Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive. And go do that. Because the world needs people who've come alive.” Joan, I am so glad that writing makes you come alive, and that you've graciously allowed all of us, in turn, to be enlivened by it. The world (and I) are so much better for it.

Congratulations on this very well-deserved award. March 30, 2019

The first Selma Fraiberg Award is presented by The Child & Adolescent
— Recipient: Susan Sherman, DSW, LCSW.
Introduction Presented by: Karen Baker, MSW, & Wendy Winograd, DSW, LCSW, BCD-P:

Karen and I are honored to present the Selma Fraiberg Award to Susan Sherman. Sue has had passion for child development and child and adolescent treatment throughout her career. Her doctoral dissertation, “The Impact of Transitional Object Experience in a Natural Separation: Entering Nursery School” represents her focus as a student. More recently, her role in founding and directing a child and adolescent psychoanalytic training program at PPSC represents her focus as a seasoned professional. As a clinician, she has maintained a private practice in psychoanalysis, treating adults, children and adolescents. As an educator, she has supervised countless social workers, teachers, and analysts in training and taught at PPSC, Smith College, Columbia, and Adelphi Schools of Social Work, and The Jewish Board's Advanced Clinical Training Program. As a scholar, she has written a book on adoption and authored articles on the mother/infant relationship, transitional objects, and the impact on family of fatal illness. She is a Distinguished Practitioner and Member of the National Academy of Practice in Social Work. Her honors are really too many to enumerate here.

And yet, in spite of all of her many professional accomplishments, Sue Sherman remains a modest and unassuming individual who is more interested in supporting and helping others than in promoting herself. A true social worker, indeed. Although I have never had the pleasure and good fortune of being one of Sue's students or supervisees, I have had the experience of her support.

It is particularly gratifying for me to present this award to Sue, since exactly 10 years ago, at this conference in New York, Sue presented me with the award for a student paper. A few years later, she invited me to be part of a panel that she put together to highlight work with children and adolescence. Sue's confidence in me was instrumental in launching my move into psychoanalytic writing. And so I'm so very pleased today to be recognizing all that she has done for her child and adolescent patients, her many supervisees and students, and others, like me, whose early work she read and supported. March 30, 2019

See previous 2017 AAPCSW Award Recipients »