Nathan W. Ackerman (November 22, 1908 – June 12, 1971) was a Russian-born American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and one of the most important pioneers of the field of family therapy.
[1] Ackerman obtained his medical degree from Columbia University in 1933.
[citation needed] 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.
[4] Nathan Ackerman died of a heart attack in 1971 in Putnam Valley, New York[5]