Peter Loewenberg Essay Prize in Psychoanalysis and Culture: 2026 Winner Announced
New York, NY — December 9, 2025 —The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) is pleased to announce that Ekta Srivastava, Ph.D. (Gurgaon, India) has been awarded the 2026 Peter Loewenberg Essay Prize in Psychoanalysis and Culture for her paper, “Cumulative Trauma, Survival and Psychic Placemaking Through Interspecies Kinship.”
The Peter Loewenberg Essay Prize (formerly the CORST Essay Prize) recognizes the best essay on psychoanalytically informed research in the biobehavioral sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Each year, the prize honors original scholarship that advances psychoanalytic understanding within and beyond the clinical sphere.
Dr. Srivastava’s paper examines the interpsychic dimensions of human–nonhuman animal relationships through a culturally situated study of two rural-urban women migrants in India. Her work explores how interspecies bonds and their unconscious dynamics can serve as sites of trauma response, survival, and psychic placemaking.
Presentation at the 2026 National Meeting
Dr. Srivastava will present her award-winning paper during the APsA 2026 National Meeting. The session will be chaired by Murray M. Schwartz, Ph.D. (Amherst, MA). During this session, APsA will also present the Undergraduate Essay Prize and the Book Prize.
Following the National Meeting presentation, the winning essay will be reviewed for publication by the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA).
Peter Loewenberg Essay Prize Award Details
The recipient of the Peter Loewenberg Essay Prize receives:
• A $1,000 prize
• Two nights of accommodation at the National Meeting host hotel
• Travel reimbursement up to $550
• Complimentary registration for the National Meeting
About the Peter Loewenberg Essay Prize
The prize is sponsored by the Committee on Psychoanalysis and the Academy of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Eligible submissions must be no longer than 30 pages, unpublished, and not under review elsewhere. Essays are evaluated anonymously; authors include identifying information only on a cover sheet.
