2021 Research Grant Application Recipients

Meet the 2021 Research Grant Recipients-  If you want to learn more about each research project, please click here to access a library of videos prepared by the awarded 2021 investigators.

Overview: The IPA Research Grants Subcommittee received a record number of 81 applications during the 2021 round. Below, you can find out more information about each of the projects awarded, as well as information on our decision-making process. 

Application and Awards Process:

  1. To qualify for grant consideration, applicants were asked to present a research proposal application that provided details such as: the overview of the planned research, methodology, the relevance to psychoanalysis and its development, institutional affiliation, ethical approval, and the project’s relevance to the goals of the IPA. 
  2. Two to three grant reviewers were appointed to evaluate each application, and a member of the research grants subcommittee evaluated all the reviews for each application. Where there were significant differences of opinion among the reviewers, the subcommittee member further reviewed the application to understand and account for the discrepancies.
  3. The subcommittee then created a short list of potential grant awards, all of which were deemed worthy of funding. However, due to limited funds against a high volume of outstanding projects, this short list had to be narrowed. 
  4. The subcommittee held a final decision-making process meeting to discuss and narrow the short list. In doing so, subcommittee members looked primarily at the special merits of each application, but also considered the distribution of grants among the various IPA regions and across the various domains of research (bearing in mind that there were not an equal number of submissions from the three IPA regions or within the various domains of research). 
  5. On completion of their awarded grant, researchers have agreed to submit a a scientific report that details the outcome or progress of the research, as well as copies to publications resulting from the research. There reports and papers will be accessible via the IPA research database.

 

2021 Research Grant Recipients

Below, please find an overview about our 2021 research grant recipients. 
If you want to learn more about each research project, please click here to access a library of videos prepared by the awarded 2021 investigators.

Title: The role of transference interpretation in repairing alliance ruptures in youth Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Brief Summary: This project will submit a core psychoanalytic hypothesis to empirical test by exploring whether transference interpretation is positively related to rupture repair in psychoanalytic treatment.
Domain: Process
Principal Investigator: Antonella Cirasola
Co-Principal Investigators: Peter Fonagy, Nick Midgley
Responsible Authority: The Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families (AFNCCF)
Country and IPA Region: UK/Europe

Title: Transition to remote therapy and back, personality orientation and attachment style

Brief Summary: This project will promote critical thinking in relation to psychoanalytic theory and practice by exploring the clinical implications of psychoanalytic treatment provided via telehealth technology.
Domain: Remote
Principal Investigator: Licia Lea Reatto
Co-Principal Investigators: Osmano Oasi, Andrzej Werbart, Mattia Giordano, Cristina Riva Crugnola
Responsible Authority: Italian Psychoanalytical Society
Country and IPA Region: Italy/Europe

Title: Reflective function and the vicissitudes of connection and conflict in couple therapy

Brief Summary: A study in Canada will measure the in-session shifts of the reflective function in couples therapy and identify antecedent statements that might accounts for these shifts. 
Domain: Process
Principal Investigator: Stephanie Wiebe
Responsible Authority: Saint Paul University
Country and IPA Region: Canada/North America

Title: Psychoanalysis and Education in vulnerable contexts: Exploration of a clinical –narrative device underpinning literacy practices

Brief Summary: This project takes literacy as a creative phenomenon linked to desire and psychic conflict, frequently affected by restrictions in the symbolic function. This is a contribution of Psychoanalysis to the field of Education with consequences to Human Development in many dimensions during the life cycle, notably in developing countries.
Domain: Social
Principal Investigator: Alicia Kachinovsky
Co-Principal Investigators: Susana Martínez, Veronica Mangarelli, Romina Ruiz
Responsible Authority: Asociación Psicoanalítica del Uruguay
Country and IPA Region: Uruguay/Latin America

Title: Biological Function of Dreaming

Brief Summary: This project investigates a Freudian hypothesis, i.e. the function of dreams to maintain sleep, using non-psychoanalytic methods, which epistemologically serves as complementary validation, as well as how such function might influence the affective consolidation of memory, an important issue on Neurology, demonstrating the importance of Psychoanalytic knowledge to other fields.
Domain: Mind and Brain
Principal Investigator: Tamara Fischmann
Responsible Authority: International Psychoanalytic University
Country and IPA Region: Germany/Europe

Title: Clinician Assisted Video Feedback Exposure-Approach Therapy (CAVEAT): An Open Trial of a Brief Psychotherapy for Traumatized Mothers and Their Children

Brief Summary: A grant recipient from Switzerland will study the feasibility of a newly manualized brief video-feedback psychotherapy for traumatized mothers of young children with the aim of interrupting the intergenerational transmission of trauma. 
Domain: Childhood
Principal Investigator: Daniel Schechter
Co-Principal Investigator: Sandra Rusconi Serpa
Responsible Authority: Lausanne University Hospital
Country and IPA Region: Switzerland/Europe

Title: The Work of Religion: Trauma, mourning, and political resistance in lives of Muslims under the Hindu nationalist regime

Brief Summary: The project addresses important cultural and social issues by setting focus on how minority groups deal on a psychological level with repressive measures of a nationalist regime.
Domain: Social
Principal Investigator: Zehra Mehdi
Responsible Authority: Columbia University
Country and IPA Region: USA and India/North America

Title: The regulation of emotional drives through dreaming

Brief Summary: By an innovative controlled quasi-experimental design, affect regulation in dreams is investigated which is relevant for both neuro-psychoanalytic theory on affects as well as for furthering our understanding of dream functions.
Domain: Mind and Brain
Principal Investigator: Malgorzata Lipinska
Co-Principal Investigator: Mark Solms
Responsible Authority: University of Cape Town
Country and IPA Region: South Africa/Europe

Title: Dialogic Moments of Meeting: An Application of Conversation Analysis to Sessions of Brief Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Brief Summary: The specific interactions between psychoanalyst and patient that are thought to induce change. This project applies a “microscopic analysis” to characterize the nature of the milliseconds that might make the difference.
Domain: Process
Principal Investigator: Marcos Herrera
Co-Principal Investigators: Andrea Ugarte, Gabriela Vásquez, Mike Durand
Responsible Authority: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
Country and IPA Region: Peru/Latin America

Title: Organized Escape: Survival in Exile, Viennese Psychoanalysis 1938 and Beyond

Brief Summary: This is an exhibition at the Freud Museum Vienna disseminating research into the history of psychoanalysis in Austria and the UK after 1938.
Domain: Conceptual
Principal Investigator: Daniela Finzi
Co-Principal Investigators: Peter Noemaier, Thomas Aichhorn, Georg Augusta
Responsible Authority: Sigmund Freud Foundation
Country and IPA Region: Austria/Europe

Title: The function of free association and free-floating attention in the analytic process: A new empirical tool from the analyst’s perspective.

Brief Summary: This study will strengthen psychoanalytic research by developing an empirical method to evaluate three core psychoanalytic concepts in clinical hours – free association, free-floating attention, and body/non-verbal communication.
Domain: Process
Principal Investigator: Rachele Mariani
Co-Principal Investigators: Alessandro Musetti, Anna Ferruta, Tiziana Bastianini, Benedetta Guerrini Degl'Innocenti, Anna Maria Speranza, Kerri Danskin, Christopher Christian
Responsible Authority: University of Rome
Country and IPA Region: Italy/Europe

Title: Multi-Level Outcome Study of Psychoanalyses of Chronically Depressed Patients with Early Trauma (MODE)

Brief Summary: MODE promotes psychoanalysis as a method of treatment by demonstrating efficacy. MODE also contributes to empirical research on psychoanalytic process through the use of multiple converging methods -- symptom change, psychoanalytic structural change, and brain changes assessed by imaging technology.
Domain: Outcome/Process/Mind and Brain
Principal Investigator: Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber
Co-Principal Investigator: Tamara Fischmann
Responsible Authorities: University of Lausanne and International Psychoanalytic University
Country and IPA Region: Germany and Switzerland/Europe