Nathan Ackerman

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

Ackerman, born in Bessarabia, 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 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.

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