NCSPP Corner
by Peter Silen, Ph.D.
NCSPP ANNUAL WRITING AWARD NEWS
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Mara Gerson, Psy.D., is the winner of the 2025 NCSPP Annual Writing Award. Her personal essay, "At Least Give Me the Finger”: Reflections on Identification, Guilt, and Aggression in the Aftermath of a Patient’s Death is a moving account of working with patients for whom hostility, defensiveness, and retaliation create the conditions for meaningful connection—and the emotional toll it takes when we come to understand the limits of our care. As Dr. Gerson writes: “There is an irony in working with people on the brink of death and realizing that in order to truly help them—to truly listen—we must relinquish our personal need to keep them alive.” fort da hopes to publish her essay in a forthcoming edition.
We invite any graduate students or recent graduates to apply now for next year’s Writing Award. We will be accepting entries until October 31st, 2026.
https://www.ncspp.org/fortda/call-entries-annual-writing-award
ALSO
WRITING MINDS: NEW PSYCHOANALYTIC READING SALON
Sunday, January 25th | 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Popoca Restaurant
906 Washington St., Oakland, CA 94607
The winner of the 2024 NCSPP Annual Writing Award, Liza Veale, MFT, will be facilitating a reading salon of “new psychoanalytic writing.” She will read her winning essay Writing For You along with five other writers reading curated essays and poetry, followed by discussion. This event, focused on building community among early-career clinicians, is sponsored by the NCSPP journal fort da as a way to support new voices and to mentor writers looking to publish in the psychoanalytic field.