Organizations frequently are inspired to name awards to honor the contributions of a prominent figure or beloved colleague. Such an award reflects the wish to evoke the memory of this individual, at least once every year, and to serve as an inspiration for future members of the organization and its mission. Over time, the proximal purpose of those who created the award fades and fewer members have first hand knowledge of the individual honored by the named award. As the years pass, the award serves a secondary purpose. In psychiatry and likely in other medical specialties, the recognition of individual clinicians through awards like the Frieda Fromm-Reichmann helps maintain a sense of balance in the field and encourages the efforts of the individual recipient. Publication of their work (such as here in Academic Psychiatry) motivates and immeasurably enhances its impact and value.

How does an award come into being? How does it find a home? After the moment of initial inspiration, such an award requires champions who are willing to embark upon the diplomacy required to win the endorsement and backing of the sponsoring organization. Reliable sources of funding must be secured. The organization must commit itself to provide the administrative support necessary for the coordinating announcements, the soliciting and registering of competitors, and the scheduling of a like- minded panel of judges willing to make the investment of time and effort required to select a winner.

The award presentation itself follows a familiar and heartwarming ceremonial tradition, with its rousing recollections of the revered colleague and the vision and mission they inspired. Then, the honored winner is called to the podium, lifted by applause that simultaneously embraces the old leader, the cause, it’s celebrated new flag bearer, and quite importantly the organization itself. Finally, the blushing winner takes the stage, receives an embrace, an engraved plaque and, nice but much less importantly, a monetary token.

Such moments can become a springboard for the career of an individual. First, and of fundamental importance is the "developmental leap" achieved by the very decision to write competitively. Subjecting one’s intellectual output to the scrutiny of an objective jury of professional to peers is an academic right-of-passage. These types of competitions force new authors to structure their thinking to a prescribed format, and to achieve the high standard of a national program. Such a challenge inevitably leads the writer to seek mentoring from an experienced academic, hopefully local, but many times more distant. Gratifying to both mentor and mentee, such an engagement can often foster a relationship that endures, spawning further collaborations, and perhaps an academic career.

Actually winning an award is a validation, an encouragement, and a credential. For the organization, the moment of acknowledgment symbolizes hope, the future, and proof of life for the mission and the values the award represents. Extending before and beyond this fleeting theatrical moment is the vision-promoting function of the awarding process itself.

Every medical specialty has multiple areas of progress and popularity. Early in our field's development, psychoanalysis dominated our treatment, often to the point of actively excluding behavioral, cognitive, or psychopharmacological approaches. With the emphasis on symptoms rather than causes, and facilitated by managed care, advances in psychopharmacology have swung the pendulum far from psychodynamics to the world of structured diagnostic instruments. Most recently, new technologies such as functional MRI and emerging breakthroughs related to the human genome project may again push psychiatry into another direction and require a new integration of human development, genetics, and environmental factors. I would suggest that we continue to have awards and recognize leaders in all these fields. The Reichmann Award reminds us that listening to patients, caring for them as unique individuals, being aware of our own feelings, and providing continuity of care are all to be cherished. Reichmann Award winners will evolve our field by integrating neuroimaging and genomic advances into the core elements of psychodynamic understanding, and that contribution will both benefit patients and may well become crucially relevant when the pendulum inevitably swings in directions we can not now predict. In my view there has never been a question that competency in dynamic psychotherapy is essential: The trainees demand it, the faculty endorses it, and the field and practice of psychiatry require it. Jerry Rosenbaum, my own chief and a well-known clinical research psychopharmacologist, stated:

The award will encourage and inspire trainees to enter this aspect of the field and advance it. When the pendulum is far away, the Reichmann Award provides support and value to the interests of the smaller group. The award puts dynamics into an historical perspective and reminds the field of an important heritage.

For the winner, the Reichmann Award is a personal affirmation of their work. Like-minded, senior colleagues have listened to and read the recipient's work and determined that it is in the best tradition of a revered figure. For someone working in an academic setting like a medical school, the award confers stature in a setting where psychiatry may not be highly valued. In terms of promotion, the award is an accepted designation of excellence that can be most helpful as medical and surgical colleagues are assessing a clinician's worthiness for promotion. Publication in a respected journal further enhances this stature .

For the individual who becomes more aware of the heritage and contributions of someone like Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, the award may have profound and inspirational meaning, especially in an area of psychiatry that does not currently get acknowledgement, respect, or much less, recognition.

The author thanks Professor Michael Jellinek, M.D. for contributing to this article.