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KARL JASPERS AWARD

The Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP) holds an annual competition for students and trainees. Eligibility includes undergraduate students, graduate students in philosophy, psychology and related fields, medical students, and residents and fellows in psychiatry. Entrants must meet eligibility requirements as of the dates of authorship and submission.

The Karl Jaspers Award is given for the best paper in the area of philosophy of psychiatry. Entries cannot have been published, nor can they have been submitted or accepted for publication, prior to submission for this award. Resubmissions will not be accepted. Papers may have more than one author but all authors must be eligible for the award. Appropriate topics for the essay include, among others, the conceptual basis of psychiatry as a discipline, the nature of explanation in psychiatry, the mind-body relation as related to psychiatric understanding, psychiatric methodology, psychiatric nosology and diagnostic issues, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophical aspects of the history of psychiatry, psychodynamic, hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches, and psychiatric ethics. Papers must have relevance for psychiatric theory, clinical practice, or psychiatric research. Papers on general topics in philosophy of mind or cognitive science without relevance to psychiatry, broadly understood, are not appropriate for this award. Similarly, clinical reports or reflections that do not advance philosophical understanding are also inappropriate entries for this competition. 

Winning submissions will be offered publication, following appropriate review and editing to meet journal guidelines, in the electronic version of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology. The home universities or training programs of the award winners will be notified of the outcome. In addition, the winning entry will be announced at our AAPP Annual Meeting. The award carries a cash prize of $350 and recognition in AAPP publications.

Criteria considered in judging the entries include:

  1. Demonstrated or potential relevance to psychiatric theory, research, or clinical practice 
  2. Novelty and/or significance of the contribution 
  3. Quality of argumentation
  4. Quality and clarity of writing
      

The deadline for submission for the 2025 Karl Jaspers Award is Sunday, December 8, 2024, by 11:59 p.m. ET (UTC - 5:00). Also:

  • Each submission must be between 3000 and 7500 words in length, excluding citation footnotes and bibliographies. Substantive footnotes do count toward the minimum and maximum.
  • Each submission must include a word count.
  • Each submission must be in PDF format.
  • Each submission must be ready for blind review and not contain the author’s name or other information that will make the author identifiable.
  • Each entrant must also send separately, in PDF or Word format, an explanation of her or his current career status and eligibility to enter the competition. In cases where the work is part of a project undertaken with others, entrants should also add explanations of the contributions of advisors or others to the work submitted. 
  • Submissions that do not meet the requirements will be rejected without being considered.
     

Please send submissions to Dr. G. Scott Waterman (Scott.Waterman@uvm.edu). 

For information on membership in the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry, please see philosophyandpsychiatry.org/membership/

 

Current and Previous Recipients:

2024 Winner: Arthur Krieger, Temple University: “The Epistemic Prerequisites of Reliable Abstinence in Addiction”

2024 Honorable Mention: Zach Schwartz, University of Utah: "First-person Knowledge of Illness: A Critical View" 

2023 Winner: Rosanna Wannberg, Saint-Louis University, Brussels, and School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris: "Institution or Individuality? Some Reflections on the Lessons to be Learned from Personal Accounts of Recovery from Schizophrenia"

2023 Honorable Mention: Laura Keulartz, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands: "'Trust No One': A Phenomenological Account of Hypermentalization in Borderline Personality Disorder"

2023 Honorable Mention: Kathryn Petrozzo, University of Utah: "Less Than Whole: Implications of Reduced Agency"

2022 Winner: Bennett Knox, University of Utah: “Exclusion of Psychopathologized Standpoints Due to Hermeneutical Ignorance Undermines Psychiatric Objectivity”

2022 Honorable Mention: Christophe Gauld, Lyon University Hospital Center; Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University; Institute for Philosophical Research, Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University: “From Psychiatric Kinds to Harmful Symptoms”

2022 Honorable Mention: J Lind, Weill Cornell Medical College: “The Gosling, the Fox, and the Disease Model of Addiction”

2021 Winner: Anne-Marie Gagné-Julien, University of Quebec at Montreal: “Dysfunction and the Definition of Mental Disorder in the DSM”

2021 Honorable Mention: Joseph Houlders, University of Birmingham: “Objective Thought and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder”

2020 Winner: Alexander Pereira, University of Sydney: “Specific Phobias are an Ideal Psychiatric Kind”

2020 Honorable Mention: Harriet Fagerberg, King’s College London: “Mind, Brain and Mental Disorder: What’s Wrong with the Computer Analogy?”

2020 Honorable Mention: Sahanika Ratnayake, University of Cambridge: “It’s Been Utility All Along: An Alternate Understanding of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and The Depressive Realism Hypothesis”

2019 Winner: Phoebe Friesen, Ethox Centre of the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford: “Expanding Outcome Measures in Schizophrenia Research: Does RDoC Pose a Threat?” 

2018 Winner: Awais Aftab, Case Western Reserve University/University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center: “Social Misuse of Disorder Designation: Exploring Dysfunction and Harm-Based Conceptual Defenses” 

2018 Honorable Mention: Stephen Gadsby, Monash University: “Anorexia Nervosa, Delusional Beliefs and Overvalued Ideas”

2017 Winner: Will Davies, University of Birmingham: “Social Explanation in Psychiatry.”

2016 Co-Winner: Sam Fellowes, University of Lancaster: “RDoC Should Not Always See Symptoms as Independent of Psychiatric Categories” 

2016 Co-Winner: Karen McCarthy, Emory University: “Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the Feeling of Being One’s Self”

2015 Winner: Hane Maung: "To What Do Diagnostic Terms Refer?"

2014 Winner: Elizabeth Pienkos: “Intersubjectivity and its Role in Schizophrenic Experience

2011 Winner: Melissa Bui: "Complexity within Psychiatry"

2010 Winner: Ben Lewis: “Adopting the Psychiatric Stance Mental Illness in Dennettian Context”

1995 Winner: David Brendel: “The Embodiment of the Mind from Hegel to Neurophysiology”

1993 Winner: Nassir Ghaemi (and Godehard Oepen): “Mind-Brain Theories and their Discontents”

1992 Winner: Mark Erikson: “Rethinking Oedipus: An Evolutionary Perspective.”

1991 Co-Winner: Larry Davidson: “Beyond the Biopsychosocial Model: Integrating Disorder, Health and Recovery”

1991 Co-Winner: Dan J. Stein: “Philosophy and the DSM”