Nathan Ackerman - Biography

Nathan W. Ackerman (November 22, 1908, Bessarabia – June 12, 1971, New York) was an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and one of the most important pioneers of the field of family therapy.

Ackerman obtained his medical degree from Columbia University in 1933. He assumed the post of chief psychiatrist at the Menninger Child Guidance Clinic (see Menninger Foundation) in 1937. In 1957 he founded the Family Mental Health Clinic in New York, and the Family Institute in 1960, which was later renamed the Ackerman Institute after his death in New York in 1971. In 1962 he co-founded the first ever family therapy journal Family Process with Donald deAvila Jackson and Jay Haley.

Ackerman greatly influenced and concentrated on the study on psychosexual stages on character formation and was one of the first clinicians to attempt to integrate insights from individual psychotherapy with the then newer ideas from systems theory. He is best known for his contribution to the development of the psychodynamic approach to family therapy.

Bibliography

• Ackerman, N.W. (1958). The Psychodynamics of Family Life. Basic Books: New York.
• Ackerman, N.W., Beatman, F.L. & Sherman, S.N. (Eds.) (1961). Exploring the base for family therapy: papers from the M. Robert Gomberg Memorial Conference (held on June 2 and 3 1960, at the Academy of Medicine, New York, N.Y.) Family Service Association of America: New York.
• Ackerman, N.W. (1962). Family Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: The Implications of Difference. Family Process. 1 (1) pp. 30-43, March 1962.
• Ackerman, N.W. (1966). Treating the Troubled Family. Basic Books: New York.
• Ackerman, N.W. (1970). Family process. Basic Books: New York.

See also

• Family therapy
• Interpersonal therapy
• Psychoanalysis
• Harry Stack Sullivan

External links

• Profile from Allyn and Bacon/Longman publishing.
• Profile from Encyclopedia of Psychology.
• Ackerman Institute