This year’s Hackett Award goes to reveller in ‘doing the exact reverse’
The 2019 Eleanor and Thomas P. Hackett Memorial Award—the most prestigious honor bestowed upon an Academy member—has been awarded to Philip Muskin, MD, MA, DLFAPA, FACLP.
Dr. Muskin will be presented with his award today (1:00 PM in the Grande Ballroom) when he gives the traditional Hackett lecture. His presentation is titled A History of Caring Collaboration.
Dr. Muskin, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, told ACLP News that he received news of the award “with great humility—and a great deal of surprise.”
“Over the past 45 years as a physician, I have come to understand that caring collaboration is the only way I have ever gotten anything done,” he says. “There is nothing I have accomplished, be it a project, planning a meeting, publishing a paper, writing a book… or anything at all, that was not done without collaborating with others.
“Though my name might have been the one associated with the endeavor, I have been blessed to associate with many truly wonderful people.”
“Whatever was done with me, I would do the exact reverse.”
—Dr. Muskin
In his presentation, Dr Muskin will outline his life journey from Brooklyn to Salt Lake City and back.
“My participation in some of the notable events in the last century, such as a polio epidemic, the cracking of the RNA code, the occupation of Barton Hall at Cornell, an odd interaction with Selective Service during the Vietnam War, and the early years of psychopharmacology vs. psychoanalysis, have all shaped me,” he says.
“I hope to demonstrate how my collaborators, many of whom were unaware of the role they played, formed me through good, and less than good, times.
“My upbringing gave me a way to conduct myself, mostly by using the ‘180-degree’ approach, i.e., whatever was done with me, I would do the exact reverse.
“It has worked quite well, I believe, and has resulted in the statement made about me that I truly treasure: We always knew that Phil had our backs.”
Thus, Dr. Muskin will demonstrate to a customarily packed audience how adversity can become a strength in someone’s life. And, for good measure, he’ll also get us thinking about how “mentorship” does not require the mentor to realize what’s happening…
A Man of Many Awards
Dr. Muskin has received many academic awards, including Outstanding Teacher of the Year at the New York State Psychiatric Institute on three separate occasions; the Association for Academic Psychiatry Lifetime Achievement Award; the Society for Liaison Psychiatry Award for outstanding contributions to the field of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry; and the American Psychiatric Association’s Irma Bland Award for Residency Teaching.
Dr. Muskin is a distinguished life fellow of the APA as well as an ACLP fellow and a distinguished life fellow of the Association for Academic Psychiatry. He is a past-president of the Association for Academic Psychiatry and the Society for Liaison Psychiatry.
In 1989, he founded the Trained Liaison Comforter Program at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital—a volunteer program that provided emotional support for families of patients in intensive care units.
He served as a consultant to the Red Cross First Step program for widows, has been a consultant to the Vivian Beaumont Theater, and was a volunteer facilitator in the NYPD Stress Management Program.
The Hackett Award is the highest ACLP honor presented to an individual for outstanding achievement in C-L Psychiatry. The award was established in 1988 to honor Thomas P. Hackett, Jr., MD, FACLP, professor and chief of the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, 1974-1988, and president of ACLP 1987-88. Dr. Hackett was a long-time leader in the field of C-L Psychiatry.