Winners of 2027 Wendy Jacobson Candidates’ Council Teaching Award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 02, 2026 — New York, NY — The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) is pleased to announce that Claire Basescu, Ph.D., of the William Alanson White Institute, and Nancy C. Winters, MD, FIPA, ABPsa, of the Oregon Psychoanalytic Institute, have been selected as the 2027 recipients of the Wendy Jacobson Candidates’ Council Teaching Award. Both will present a collaborative session on teaching excellence at the APsA National Meeting in Washington, D.C., in February 2027.

The Wendy Jacobson Candidates’ Council Teaching Award (formerly the Candidates’ Council Master Teacher Award) recognizes faculty who excel in the teaching of psychoanalytic candidates at APsA institutes and centers. A candidate-driven honor, it is distinct from the Edith Sabshin Teaching Award, which recognizes excellence in the psychoanalytic teaching of non-candidates. In 2024, the Candidates’ Council named the award for Wendy Jacobson, M.D., in recognition of her contributions to psychoanalytic education; she in turn generously endowed it, along with the Edith Sabshin Teaching Award. Thanks to her endowment, the two recipients selected each year receive $2,500 apiece, along with the honor of presenting a collaborative session at the APsA National Meeting.

“These two educators embody what this award was created to celebrate — teachers who deepen candidates’ understanding of psychoanalytic ideas, cultivate creative and compassionate clinical thinking, and inspire a lasting passion for learning,” noted Dr. Amanda Exman, Chair of the APsA Candidates’ Council selection committee.

Dr. Basescu is a faculty member at the William Alanson White Institute, where she created and teaches “Credo: My Psychoanalysis,” a writing-based seminar that helps candidates find their own clinical voice and articulate an evolving philosophy of treatment. Through weekly writing prompts and detailed, individualized feedback, she treats writing as a mode of psychoanalytic inquiry — a way for candidates to deepen self-awareness, tolerate uncertainty, and develop their analytic identity. Candidates describe her seminar as both intellectually demanding and emotionally safe, with particular attention to the sociocultural surround of clinical work. Her nomination came from the candidates of her rising third-year cohort.

Dr. Winters is a faculty member at the Oregon Psychoanalytic Institute, where over the past several years she has taught a wide range of courses for candidates at every stage of training — among them seminars on Bionian Field Theory and intersubjectivity, a multi-part “Return to Freud” close reading of core Freudian texts alongside contemporary scholarship, Psychosomatics, Case Conference, and a writing practicum on analytic case writing. An artist as well as an analyst, she is known for a creative, experiential teaching style that invites candidates to work with imagery, dreams, and writing, and for building a warm, nonjudgmental classroom in which candidates can take intellectual and emotional risks. Her nomination, which drew unanimous support from the candidates who put it forward, praised her deep dedication to teaching and her gift for making demanding material both rigorous and alive.