Yale Bulletin and Calendar

December 15, 2006|Volume 35, Number 13|Four-Week Issue

Sidney Blatt lauded for contributions
to psychoanalytic research

Sidney J. Blatt, professor of psychiatry and psychology, and chief of the psychology section in the Department of Psychiatry, has received the Mary S. Sigourney Award for distinguished lifetime contributions to psychoanalytic theory and research.

The Sigourney Award, considered the most distinguished international award for contributions to psychoanalysis, includes a prize of $50,000.

Blatt's research at Yale over the past 40 years has been based on the assumption that many psychiatric disorders are not separate diseases, but disturbances derived from disruptions of normal psychological development -- specifically, disruptions of the capacity for interpersonal relatedness and in the formation of a coherent and essentially positive sense of self.

Unlike conventional psychiatric views of mental disorders, Blatt's conceptualizations are based on the identification of structural similarities and basic interrelationships among various forms of psychological disturbance. The validity of these formulations has been demonstrated by empirical research. Blatt and his colleagues also developed methods for systematically assessing changes in the structural cognitive organization and thematic content of mental representations of self and significant others and demonstrated that changes in these dimensions provide understanding of the extent and nature of therapeutic change.

Blatt's contributions had previously been recognized with awards for distinguished scientific contributions from two divisions of the American Psychological Association, a division of the Canadian Psychological Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Society for Personality Assessment and the Association of Professors of Psychology in Medical Schools.

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