Nathan Ackerman ^People

The Ackerman Institute for the Family was founded in 1960 by Dr. Nathan W. Ackerman. Although trained as a classical analyst, Dr. Ackerman broke with this ap- proach after World War I when he began to experiment with seeing patients and their families in a group. He published, taught and showed movies demonstrating this new method, pioneering not only a new type of therapy, but also the tradition of the audio- visual documentation of clinical work that became one of the cornerstones of family therapy training. In 1960, a group of families treated by Dr. Ackerman established a non-profit institute to allow him to expand his training activities.Ackerman greatly influenced and concentrated on the study on psychosexual stages on character formation and was one of the first clinicians to attempt to inte- grate insights from individual psychotherapy with the then newer ideas from systems theory. He is best known for his contribution to the development ofthe psychodynam- ic approach to family therapy. With regards to family therapy, Ackerman incorporated the idea of the family being a social and emotional unit.His main focuses, with respect to family therapy, were intergenerational ties and conflicts, the influence of long-term social change impacting the family, the de- velopmental stages of the family as a single unit, theimportance of emotion within the family structure, and equal amounts of authority among parents.