Michael Fordham Prize Winner 2026

 We are very pleased to announce Donald Kalsched as the winner of the 2026 Fordham Prize for his paper "War in the Consulting Room: When Rage and Hatred Enter the Analytic Field". This award-winning paper was part of a special issue for the Journal titled “War: Archetypal Energies, Cultural Discontent, Internal Discord,” published in September 2025 (2025, 70, 4, 663–682).

The Michael Fordham Prize is awarded annually to the author demonstrating the most creative and original approach to clinical analytic thinking in a paper published in the Journal of Analytical Psychology in the preceding year. Donald Kalsched's paper was notable in its integration of rich and detailed case material demonstrating analytic thinking firmly rooted in a lived clinical practice. His paper offers a masterful overview of developments in psychoanalytic theory, and an argument is made for the connections between preverbal trauma and dissociated aggression that cannot be formulated but can be enacted and worked with in the interpersonal field of the analytic space. Contributing to a greater understanding of the place of aggression in analytical psychology, Kalsched's paper furthers our insight into both negative transference and negative countertransference. The case example he offers – profound, honest, and courageous – shows how a seasoned analyst can continuously interrogate and struggle with himself at the deepest levels of reflection and emotion to reach a point of meeting and potential healing through creatively approaching the aggression arising both in patients and in ourselves.

The paper is available for free download at:https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5922.13113. 

We will announce the date of an online “Meeting the Author” event with Donald Kalsched soon.