The Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP) announces a competition for students and trainees. Eligibility includes medical students, graduate students in philosophy, psychology and related fields, and residents and fellows in psychiatry.
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, held concurrently with the American Psychiatric Association’s Annual Meeting. In 2021, the meeting will be held on the weekend of May 1 and 2 in Los Angeles if in-person conferences are feasible and advisable by then. If not, plans will be made for a virtual conference. The award carries a cash prize of $350 and recognition in AAPP publications.
Criteria considered in judging the entries include:
- Demonstrated or potential relevance to psychiatric theory, research, or clinical practice
- Novelty and/or significance of the contribution
- Quality of argumentation
- Quality and clarity of writingThe deadline for submission of entries is Friday, December 11, 2020. Also:
- Each submission must be between 3000 and 7500 words in length, excluding footnotes and bibliographies.
- 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 what 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 https://philosophyandpsychiatry.org/membership/.
