Nathan Ackerman
Nathan W. Ackerman was a Russian-born American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and one of the most important pioneers of the field of family therapy. He also was an expert in marriage counselling.
Biography
Ackerman was born to a well-to-do Russian Jewish family in Bessarabia, Russian Empire. His parents, David Ackerman and Bertha Gringberg, both pharmacists. The family decided to emigrate to New York City in 1902.Ackerman obtained his medical degree from Columbia University in 1933. He assumed the post of chief psychiatrist at the Menninger Child Guidance Clinic in 1937. In 1955, he contributed to the founding of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. 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 1961 he co-founded the first ever family therapy journal Family Process with Donald deAvila Jackson and Jay Haley.
Ackerman attended a public school in New York City. In 1929 he was awarded a B.A. from Columbia University, and in 1933 earned his M.D. from the same university. After a short spell as an intern at the Montefiore Hospital in New York, he interned at the Menninger Clinic and Sanitorium in Topeka, Kansas. He joined their psychiatric staff in 1935.