Vamık VOLKAN 1932 - ....

After graduating from Ankara Medical Faculty in 1956, he went to USA. He worked as a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia for 45 years and as a chief physician at the hospital for 18 years. He retired in 2002. Volkan worked as Emeritus Training and Observer Analyst at the Washington Institute of Psychoanalysis. One year after his retirement, he worked for ten years as a senior scholar at the Erikson Institute in Massachusetts. In the early 1980s, he served as Chairman of the International Relations Committee of the American Psychiatric Association. In 1987, he founded the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction (CSMHI) at the University of Virginia Medical School. He served as the president of the Turkish-American Neuropsychiatry Association, the International Political Psychology Association, the Virginia Psychoanalytical Association and the American College of Psychoanalysts. He participated in a project sponsored by the American Psychiatric Association and took part in the Arab-Israeli unofficial dialogue that lasted for 6 years. He also chaired informal diplomacy meetings that brought together hostile delegates in many troubled parts of the world. These include US -Soviet Union, the United States-Russia, Russia-Baltic States, Croatia and Bosnia, Georgia-South Ossetia, Turkey and Greece interactions. He also helped traumatized societies. These included the Albanian communities after the death of Dictator Enver Hoxha and the Kuwaiti communities after the withdrawal of Saddam Hussein's forces. He worked as a Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at three universities in Turkey. He has published more than 50 books so far and translated into many languages and currently has nearly 500 scientific papers. In 2016, he was awarded the Mary Sigourney Prize in psychoanalysis, which is one of the most prestigious awards in the world.