The Edith Sabshin Teaching Award recognizes APsA members who have made outstanding contributions to psychoanalytic education for clinicians, academics, and students who are neither psychoanalysts nor psychoanalytic candidates. Many psychoanalysts, psychodynamic psychotherapists, and psychoanalytic academics teach in settings such as undergraduate and graduate university courses, medical schools, residency training programs, continuing education programs, psychotherapy training programs, mentorship programs, workshops, and conferences.

The award specifically recognizes APsA members who teach psychoanalytic ideas and clinical approaches in educational settings outside formal psychoanalytic training. The broader objectives of the award are to:

1. Encourage APsA members to impart psychoanalytic knowledge to individuals who are neither psychoanalysts nor psychoanalytic candidates, including students and clinicians from a wide range of backgrounds and in diverse educational settings;
2. Acknowledge and reward excellence in psychoanalytic teaching; and
3. Stimulate interest in APsA through exposure to APsA members who are excellent psychoanalytic educators, both locally and nationally.

Established in 1999, the award is named after Edith Goldbarb Sabshin (1924-1992), a physicist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst. Dr. Sabshin was a training and supervising analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, where she also served as Assistant Dean of Education, and then at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. She was the Secretary of APsA from 1982 to 1985. The award is presented at the APsA National Meeting by the Chair of the Edith Sabshin Teaching Award Committee, a program of APsA ‘s Department of Academic and Professional Affairs.

Beginning in 2027, the award will now be given annually to two APsA members who meet the criteria outlined below and each recipient will receive an honorarium of $2,500, made possible by an endowment from Wendy Jacobson, M.D. Recipients will also receive a certificate recognizing this achievement, and their names will be published in the APsA Final Program and announced at the annual meeting.