 During his lifetime he received many awards, including the Gold Medal of the Beccaria Prize in 1970, and the Jason A. Hannah Medal of the Royal Society of Canada.Ellenberger has been characterised as one of the mid-century, interdisciplinary independents in psychiatric thought.His unique career path and independent, if moderate, Freudian revisionism, made him at times an isolated figure, especially with the biological turn in psychiatry at the close of the twentieth century.