Vittorio Lingiardi’s Work Wins The Sigourney Award - 2023
/Dr. Vittorio Lingiardi’s Work Supporting Complex Psychodynamic Diagnoses
With Empirical Soundness Earns The Sigourney Award-2023
Seattle, WA — Nov. 2, 2023 – The Sigourney Award-2023 bestows international recognition and a substantial cash prize for outstanding work that advances psychoanalytic thought worldwide. Annually, a prestigious panel of judges carefully reviews applicants from across the globe and today, Robin A. Deutsch, PhD and Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, announces Vittorio Lingiardi, MD, Rome, Italy, as one of four international recipients presented this year’s prestigious prize.
“Professor Lingiardi’s extensive scholarly work and public engagement elevates the standing of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thinking in his home country as well as abroad, embodying Mary Sigourney’s defined commitment to disseminating psychoanalysis’ benefits in and outside of the confines of the consulting room,” said Deutsch.
Professor Vittorio Lingiardi’s pioneering work in both psychodynamic diagnosis and LGBTQ+ issues demonstrates an ability to bridge the gap between the richness and complexity of psychoanalytical clinical practice and the need for empirical soundness; all the while finding novel ways to extend psychoanalysis’ reach and effect. On these topics he has been able to reach key audiences through books, articles, editorials, TV programs, and social networks. A psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and full professor at Sapienza University of Rome, Lingiardi splits his clinical practice focus on working with patients from marginalized groups and serving people with personality and interpersonal problems. His research in the LGBTQ+ field has helped change a "classical" and often pathologizing psychoanalytic viewpoint. He helped formulate and publish the Italian guidelines, endorsed by the National Board of Italian Psychologists, for psychotherapy and counseling with LGBTQ+ patients and has often spoken publicly in defense of minoritized groups and families’ civil rights to increase social acceptance.
Additionally, Lingiardi’s work focused on “resuscitating” the word diagnosis in psychoanalytic culture and clinical practice. He and Nancy Williams co-edited the second edition of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM-2). Their revisions embedded an empirically based psychoanalytic approach to diagnosis and placed personality and its traits in a broader psychoanalytic diagnostic framework. Closely interconnected with the patient's mental functioning and symptomatology, grounded in research, and systematized in the PDM-2, the Manual now reaches an international audience in multiple languages.
During the past decade, Lingiardi’s research concentrated on three key elements: 1) enhancement of psychodynamic diagnosis, therapeutic alliance, and case formulation emphasizing the importance of patients for “who they are” not “what they have;” 2) depathologization of non-heterosexual and non-cis-normative conditions; and 3) dissemination of psychoanalytic constructs and culture to a wide audience including non-specialists, with a focus on public interventions concerning psychoanalysis and social culture, mental health, public health strategies, and the rights of sexual minorities. His work tries to free the diagnostic formulation from a simple labeling process in order to develop the concept of case formulation, as each patient is at once unique but also referable to a clinical category.
His work has reached key audiences through articles, editorials, TV programs, widely published books, and social networks. Lingiardi’s weekly column, “Psycho” for the magazine il Venerdì di Repubblica, features reviews of film’s impact as it pertains to the psychological subjectivity of the viewer. His essays – for example, “Diagnosis and Destiny” (2018) and “Archipelago N. Variations on Narcissisms” (2021) – have a poetic style. Lingiardi is also a poet, with two published books of poetry, titled My Confusion is Precise in Love (2012) and Alterations of Rhythm (2015). His psychological literary essay Mindscapes (2017) won the Viareggio-Giuria Award, a major Italian literary prize.
“They say psychoanalysis is dying but one of the most exciting things about this discipline is that she can psychoanalyze herself and learn from her own errors. She is always evolving so it's impossible to switch off the energy of psychoanalysis,” Lingiardi says, adding, “Winning The Sigourney Award is one of the happiest moments in my career, and I want to acknowledge the commitment and support of my colleagues and collaborators.”
Lingiardi’s award-winning work is added to a long list of innovative contributions advancing psychoanalytic thought that, since 1990, have been honored with The Sigourney Award. This year, he shares this honor with Rosine Perelberg, PhD (London, England); Daniel Pick, PhD (London, England); and Virginia Ungar, MD (Buenos Aires, Argentina), whose work also met the demanding Award criteria.