Acclaimed Writer, Psychoanalytic Psychologist, Philanthropist to Receive International Honor

Dr. Lucy Daniels to Receive Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award, Florence, May 15 – 17

(Raleigh, US/Florence, IT) – May 7, 2014 – The International Symposium on Psychoanalysis and Art will honor Dr. Lucy Daniels with their first ever Lifetime Achievement Award at the group’s sixth annual symposium on May 15-17 in Florence. Dr. Daniels will receive the award at a gala dinner at the conclusion of the seminar on May 17.

The committee cites Dr. Daniels’ unparalleled support of the arts and psychoanalysis in the United States. Graziella Magherini, M.D. will also be honored with the award for her work in Italy and Europe.

“Dr. Lucy Daniels has been the chief and most articulate advocate of the exploration of the ties between our creativity and its power over our mental health,” says Dr. Laurie Wilson, an organizer of the symposium. “When our committee met to discuss the symposium we recognized that Dr. Daniels has been a cornerstone of its existence and an honor should be created to recognize her contributions to these combined fields.”

The theme of this year’s triennial symposium will be “Art/Object: The Artist, the Object, the Patron, and the Audience” and will feature an international roster of prominent art historians, artists, critics, and psychoanalysts, who will explore visual and musical works of art.

A long-term psychoanalytic patient herself, Dr. Daniels is an acclaimed writer of both fiction and memoir and a renowned psychologist (with an active practice at age 80). She is the founder of the Lucy Daniels Center for Early Childhood and the Lucy Daniels Foundation based in Raleigh, where she has conducted an annual seminar “Our Problems as the Roots of Our Power,” for creative individuals since 1992.

“Our creativity is our life force and the key to understanding so much of our own mental health issues and those of history’s great artists,” says Dr. Daniels. “I’m honored to receive this inaugural lifetime achievement award and look forward to continuing my work exploring the integral relationship between psychoanalysis and the arts.”

Dr. Daniels is the subject of a recent documentary, “In So Many Words,” that explores the roots of her own creativity. The film debuted at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in 2013 and has received special screenings in New York, Philadelphia, Denver, Atlanta and Grand Rapids as well as at the NC Museum of Art.

About Lucy Daniels

Lucy Daniels is a writer and clinical psychologist in private practice in Raleigh, North Carolina. Daniels wrote her first novel, Caleb My Son (1956) while hospitalized with anorexia nervosa. A best seller published in several countries, it earned her a Guggenheim fellowship—at 22, the youngest recipient ever—that required the writing of her second novel, High on a Hill (1961) about life in a mental hospital. But after that Daniels stopped writing. Instead, she raised her four children, went to college, and became a clinical psychologist. Only then did she receive, through psychoanalysis, the assistance she had needed for more than 25 years. This resulted in her memoir, With a Woman’s Voice (2002) and her first novel in over 40 years, The Eyes of the Father (2005) and a chronicle of her psychological journey back to writing, Dreaming Your Way to Creative Freedom (2005).

Daniels is the founder of the Lucy Daniels Foundation and the Lucy Daniels Center for Early Childhood both located in Cary, North Carolina. The LDF has carried out extensive research focused on creative writers undergoing psychoanalysis, the data of which is now also utilized by Emory University. For the past 20 years Daniels has conducted an annual seminar, entitled “Our Problems as the Roots of Our Power,” for individuals in pursuit of creative and emotional freedom.

In 2013 a new documentary, “In So Many Words,” based on the life of Lucy Daniels was released by Oscar-shortlisted documentarian Elisabeth Haviland James at the Full Frame Film Festival. In the same year, Walking with Moonshine (2013), a collection of stories written across her life, was published.

Lucy Daniels has four children, eight grandchildren, and a dachshund named Maggie.