Announcing the 2027 Ralph Roughton Paper Award Winner

New York, NY – July  30, 2026 – The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) is pleased to announce that Gila Ashtor, Ph.D. and Christopher Walling, Ph.D., FIPA have won the 2027 Ralph Roughton Paper Prize for their paper “Beyond the Dyad:  Eros, Multiplicity, and the Throuple.”

Established in 1998 in honor of Ralph Roughton, M.D., founding Chairperson of APsA’s Committee on Gay and Lesbian Issues, the award originally recognized published papers that advanced psychoanalytic understanding of gay and lesbian lives. In 2007, the mission of the award was changed, and now it honors an unpublished manuscript that makes an original and outstanding contribution to the psychoanalytic understanding and/or treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, trans, or gender-variant people.

In this groundbreaking paper, Drs. Ashtor and Walling powerfully challenge the normative theory in psychoanalysis that dyadic relationship is the only path to psychological maturity and health. A reviewer wrote: “In all my years of reviewing papers for this award, this is by far the best paper I’ve come across, the deepest going theoretically and clinically.  I think the paper is a tour-de-force and destined to change our field.”

Drs. Ashtor and Walling will present their paper at the 2027 APsA National Meeting in Washington, D.C. in February at the Committee on Gender and Sexuality workshop, which is designed for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and trainees who wish to deepen their clinical understanding of working with queer patients. The program is intended to satisfy the requirements of states that mandate CE/CME credits in cultural competency, though final determination rests with each state licensing board. The paper will be published in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Award Details

The Ralph Roughton Paper Award includes:
• A $1,000 prize
• An invitation to present at the APsA National Meeting
• Eligibility to submit the manuscript for review by The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, where—if accepted—it will be published as the winner of the Ralph Roughton Paper Prize.  The deadline for submissions for the 2028 Award is June 1, 2027, and they should be emailed to Carol B. Levin, M.D. at [email protected].

Sponsor

The award is sponsored by the Committee on Gender & Sexuality of the American Psychoanalytic Association.