Ackerman Institute News Blog

Short Conversation with Martha Edwards

2012-02-03T17:45:00.000-05:00

"Short Conversations" is a weekly video series that premiered in January 2012, and features the renowned faculty of the Ackerman Institute for the Family talking about a variety of subjects relevant to family life.

Martha Edwards makes her debut in this month's "Short Conversations," as she discusses how parents can instill values in their children. This is the first of six "Short Conversations" with Martha on raising children.

"Short Conversations..." will explore subjects across the entire range of the family experience, including marriage, child rearing, aging, substance abuse, sexuality and so many other issues that impact our happiness and understanding of ourselves.

Alumni Lecture on Borderline Personality Disorder

2012-01-30T16:50:00.001-05:00

Dr. Perry Hoffman presenting at the Alumni lecture

Ackerman Institute for the Family hosted a presentation by Dr. Perry Hoffman, an expert in Borderline Personality Disorder, on Friday, January 27, 2012. The lecture is part of the quarterly Alumni Association meetings, when Ackerman Alumni gather at the Institute to learn about the latest advances in family therapy and enjoy a presentation from therapists at the forefront of the field.

During the talk, entitled “If Only We Had Known: Borderline Personality Disorder,” Dr. Hoffman discussed the current thinking on this psychological condition characterized by a pattern of instability in relationships, self-image, and emotions.

The presentation familiarized the attendees with the range of Borderline Personality Disorder symptoms, along with the frequent co-occurring illnesses that can complicate recovery and treatment. Dr. Hoffman also described “Family Connections,” a psycho-educational training protocol she developed, designed for families with a relative who has been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Dr. Perry Hoffman trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy and is now in private practice in New York City and Westchester County. She is co-editor, with John G. Gunderson, MD, of the book Understanding and Treating Borderline Personality Disorder: A Guide for Professionals and Family Members and co-editor of Borderline Personality Disorder: Meeting the Challenges to Successful Treatment.

Ackerman in the News

2012-01-25T16:36:00.000-05:00

Ackerman Institute for the Family's distinguished faculty is once again in the news!

Jean Malpas, Director of the Gender and Family Services, is the expert launching the Professional Health series of The Atlantic's health section, with an article entitled "Professional Help: 5 tips for Those Raising Transgender Children."

To read the article, click here.

In the article, Jean shares some essential lessons for parents of children who may not conform to gender norms.

Ackerman Insitute is proud of its faculty. They continuously seek the most cutting-edge and innovative treatment practices, training, and research in family therapy, making Ackerman the most highly regarded Institute in the field.

Introducing Short Conversations

2012-01-05T15:07:00.004-05:00

Starting in January 2012, Ackerman Institute for the Family is introducing a new online series called "Short Conversations..."

Every week, viewers will be treated to ideas for living from the world renowned Ackerman faculty.

"Short Conversations..." will explore subjects across the entire range of the family experience, including marriage, child rearing, aging, substance abuse, sexuality and so many other issues that impact our happiness and understanding of ourselves.  

"Short Conversations..." are your chance to connect with the finest family therapists in the world. Concerned about your child’s behaviors? Frustrated with your partner’s distance? Looking for ideas to deal with an aging parent? If so, then "Short Conversations..." will soon become a welcome part of your day.

This week's "Short Conversation" is about chores and children, featuring faculty member Fiona True.

Welcome to the conversation.

Faculty News: Jean Malpas & Andrea Blumenthal Receive Family Process Institute Grant

2011-11-29T11:02:00.006-05:00

Join us in congratulating Jean Malpas and Andrea Blumenthal, who recently received the Family Process Institute Early Career/Training Grant. They are the first to be awarded this grant which will support the development of innovative clinical activities in regards to the Gender and Family Project (GCP). Family Process, the granting institution, is an organization dedicated to developing and sharing new theory, research, practice, and policy related to families and systems.

Jean Malpas describes what the grant will be funding in the following:

"We are honored that the Family Process Institute has chosen to recognize and support the work of the Gender and Family Project (GFP). The grant will be used to implement acutely needed services for families with a gender nonconforming youth. Groups for parents and gender nonconforming children will be provided. It will help us reach out to more families and provide training to clinicians and agencies aiming to improve their competencies with these families. As an academic institute, we also seek a better understanding and documentation of the needs of families with a gender nonconforming member. Finally, the GFP looks forward to identifying and developing a network of providers who can support families in a similar situation."

Jean Malpas, LMFT, LMHC graduated from Brussels University's department of psychology with a master's degree in clinical psychology and a post-master's degree in psychotherapy. He completed his family therapy training at the Ackerman Institute for the Family. Mr. Malpas was initially trained in the Belgian school of social constructionism and since then, along with his relational training at the Ackerman Institute, has cultivated an integrative practice inspired by narrative and experiential relational frameworks. He believes in the impact of larger systems on the emotional, cognitive and relational resources of each family. Mr. Malpas is an "Early Career Member" of the American Family Therapy Academy and has presented nationally on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender couples and families and social justice. His work on transgender couples in therapy has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Family Studies. His relational work on crystal methamphetamine addiction and community-based approach has also been published.

Andrea Blumenthal, LCSW, is a member of the teaching faculty at the Ackerman Institute for the Family and a clinical member of Ackerman’s Center for Families and Health and the newly launched Gender and Family Project (GFP). She has extensive practice experience working with children of all ages and diverse families in a variety of mental health and child welfare agency contexts. As a clinician working in community-based settings, she has focused on working with individuals and families affected by physical and sexual abuse, domestic violence, and other forms of trauma. She has completed a post-graduate training program in the Treatment of Interpersonal Trauma at Fordham University and is a graduate of the clinical Externship training program at Ackerman. Ms. Blumenthal maintains a private practice specializing in attachment traumas and relationship issues with couples and families.

"Tribute to the Families" Gala 2011

2011-11-22T16:22:00.004-05:00

It was an evening of generosity, laughter, elegance and pride.

On Tuesday night, October 25th, the Ackerman Institute for the Family reached out to its friends and supporters at its fundraising event of the year, the "Tribute to Families" gala. Guastavino’s, the beautiful hall tucked beneath the 59th St. Bridge, was sparkling.

During the cocktail hour, guests were treated to a fascinating silent auction, which included artwork, dinners, jewelry, professional consultations and fashions. And while people mingled, ran into old friends and got their picture taken, they were able to wander by the Ackerman book table and watch clips from Ackerman's exciting new video series "Short Conversations." And then it was upstairs to dinner.

The celebrity emcee for the evening was the fabulous Natalie Morales, one of the co-hosts of the Today Show. With grace and sparkle, she guided the audience through a series of videos and then set the stage for the new Board President, Alec Haverstick. After a thoughtful, challenging set of remarks on families and the American economy, Alec led into the first big emotional moment of the evening: the Ackerman Service Award to John O'Neill, long time board member and Treasurer. His response was both heartfelt and humble.

Then came the live auction hosted by comedienne Jane Condon. Jane pulled out every trick in her comic arsenal: jokes, insults, self-mockery, and while the audience was howling with laughter, they managed to bid up two fantastic beach house weekends, dinner at the legendary Rao's, and a backstage tour and taping of the Today Show. All of this before dinner!

After dinner, Lois Braverman, President and CEO of Ackerman Institute, took the audience on an intellectual tour de force. Using powerful scenes from two contemporary films, Lois deconstructed the emotional underpinnings of the characters and situations. Her analysis laid bare what the scenes revealed about families, about our culture, and how they relate to the work of the Institute. She tied it together with perfection . . . because both of the clips Lois showed were from the work of the renowned film producer Christine Vachon. Lois then introduced Ms. Vachon as the first ever recipient of the Ackerman Media Award. Ms. Vachon, producer of many films including Boys Don't Cry, Far From Heaven and Mildred Pierce, shared with the audience how honored she was, and how deeply connected she felt to Ackerman and its mission.

As the evening came to a close, the guests lingered on, somehow unwilling to let such an important event end.

More Gala: Honoring John O'Neill

2011-11-22T15:23:00.003-05:00

For 10 years, John O'Neill has been a member of Ackerman's board, generously giving his time, expertise and money to further the work of the Institute. For the past 6 years, he has also served as its Treasurer. During the challenging economy of the last decade, John has called upon his brilliant background as a senior partner at the accounting firm of Ernst + Young to ensure that Ackerman stays on firm footing. For all of that work and more, the Institute used this year’s Gala as an opportunity to say thank you by honoring him with the Ackerman Distinguished Service Award.

To a standing ovation, he ascended to the dais to receive the award from Board Chairman Alec Haverstick. A heartfelt video from his friends and family played on a large screen, congratulating him, teasing him, and saluting him. With his signature humility, John O'Neill used the opportunity to once again, point the spotlight where he has always believed it belongs: on Ackerman and its work.

Remarks from John O'Neill at Gala

Thank you, Alec and thanks to everyone here tonight for helping make this a successful Gala. I'd also like to give a special thanks to my wife, Kathy, and my daughter, Shannon, for their help on the Gala Committee. Also, I know there are a number of my friends who have made contributions, some of whom have traveled far to be here tonight. I thank you all.

I am deeply honored and humbled to receive this award, especially knowing all the deserving honorees who have come before me. I would also like to congratulate Christine Vachon, tonight's other honoree.

I've always believed in the importance of giving back to the community and to organizations like Ackerman that have helped me and my family. We each have an obligation to lend our expertise where needed and to give back financially within our means. The chance to help strengthen Ackerman, to share my expertise and my time, is something I consider a privilege, and a welcome responsibility.

As I have said at many Ackerman board meetings, Ackerman Institute for the Family is still a well kept secret outside the family therapy community, where we are well known and revered around the world.

This Gala lets the world know that we are Moving Families Forward.

One of the many areas Ackerman excels in relates to family and business. Strong family relationships help employees build strong work related relationships and perform better at their jobs. I want each of you to think about how Ackerman's Center for Work and Family, led by Dr. Peter Fraenkel, could be helpful to your business.

That you are honoring me tonight is very generous; it's a great moment for me. But the fact that we are all here, doing whatever we can to ensure that the Ackerman Institute for the Family continues to move families forward...well, that's what makes this evening truly special for me. Thank you.

More Gala: Honoring Christine Vachon

2011-11-22T14:53:00.005-05:00

One of the most mesmerizing segments of every Ackerman Gala is what President Lois Braverman refers to as "teachable moments." It is during this moment in the evening when the audience gets an insider’s view on the work, the thinking, and the intellectual capital of the Institute. This year was no exception, and perhaps it raised the bar for "teachable moments" for Galas to come.

Lois Braverman took the podium and showed the audience scenes from some contemporary films. She proceeded to breakdown the hidden meanings inside the scenes, and what they revealed about families and human relationships. It was fascinating, and it led directly to a brand new moment in the Gala agenda: the first ever Ackerman Institute Media Award. The award goes to someone in the media who has pioneered and advanced our thinking about families and family relationships.

The first honoree was Christine Vachon, the celebrated, independent film producer of such esteemed movies as Boys Don’t Cry, Far From Heaven, and Mildred Pierce. By design, it was from two of Ms. Vachon's films that Lois drew her scenes for the teachable moments. The Ackerman Institute Media Award is a powerful new step for the Institute, as it draws the connection between family issues and American culture. Ms. Vachon is the distinguished first recipient, and her work is consistent with the teaching and research that is done at the Institute.

The Remarks of Lois Braverman and Christine Vachon

Lois Braverman:

This evening you've heard the phrase, "Moving Families Forward." This is Ackerman: we move families forward...towards better communication, deeper understanding of one another, and stronger, healthier relationships.

Families are central to who we are. In the media, our best writers, artists and filmmakers help elucidate our understanding of relationships, secrets, rituals, connections and history. At its very best, the media provides us with "teachable moments," inspiring us to look more deeply, and more openly, at our lives and our families. For example, this clip from the film "Gigantic," the scene we've just watched resonates in so many ways, and it provokes one of the fundamental questions that we work with at Ackerman: "What is NORMAL?"

For so many people, "normal" is a goal and a value...and something that feels unattainable. What this scene does, so poignantly, is puncture the myth of "normal."

Here we have an elegant, poised older woman and an alienated, vulnerable younger woman who is on the verge of joining the family. The young woman's own mother doesn't even recognize her on the phone, doesn't even remember her birthday. So it's easy for her to idealize, and envy, the Jane Alexander character, the matriarch.

When we're struggling, it's easy to look at other families, other marriages, other people, and feel: "I wish I could be like them. They look...normal." And if you're about to join that family, as the young woman is, it's easy to wonder, “Do I fit? Because I don't feel normal."

But what things look like on the outside, and what is true, are always two different things.

Across the many centers and projects at the Ackerman Institute for the Family, we are helping people connect to something inside themselves more meaningful than "normal."

Being emotionally healthy will never be the same for any two people, or marriages, or families.

From the Children and Relational Trauma Center to The Gender and Family Project, at Ackerman, we recognize and cherish the fact that every family has its own contradictions, its own rituals, its own hurdles. This is the very first step in Moving Families Forward.

Because as Jane Alexander so succinctly observes, "Nothing's normal."

And there's nothing like a good movie to make you laugh, cry, squirm, and above all...THINK. Or RE-THINK...your position.

Which is something we know about: At Ackerman, we are charting the sea changes in the definition of family, every day. We are navigating waters that the generations before ours didn't even know existed. Science, the Law, and Cultural Mores, are changing how we think about "who is family."

We understand ourselves by understanding our family—our biological family as well as our emotional family. At Ackerman we help family members put those disparate pieces together into a coherent picture.

So, as we expand our notion of who our family is, we expand our understanding of ourselves: Where did I come from? From a sperm donor? An egg donor? A surrogate? Am I the product of those who raised me, and how I was brought up? Or am I the product of the genes I've inherited? Or a bit of both?

And on the adoption front, with the opening of the records, people are increasingly making the connection to their biological family members, and that goes in both directions: children seeking biological parents, biological parents seeking children who they gave up.

WHO IS FAMILY?...is an ongoing conversation at Ackerman; a challenging, nuanced conversation that is one of the reasons why our clients come to us.

But we are not alone in this conversation. Among other things, media is expanding the conversation along with us, as demonstrated in this next clip from the movie "And Then She Found Me."

Both of the clips you've just seen are from films produced by Christine Vachon, a VERY independent producer who has created some of the most meaningful films of our time, including "Boys Don't Cry," "Far From Heaven," and most recently "Mildred Pierce."

What is clearly evident in her films is Christine's vision of the infinite shades of gray that color our understanding of family. Her films are often brutally honest about the struggles that individuals face when their family connections are broken.

In her career, she has pioneered films that have given us a window into the lives of people who have been marginalized by a "dimension of difference": be it race, class, gender, sexual preference, or disability. At the same time, her films celebrate the potential for understanding and for change.

For her fierce compassion for our differences, and her daring sensitivity in stretching how families are portrayed in our culture, I am very pleased and proud to present the Ackerman Institute’s first-ever "Families in Media Award" to Christine Vachon.

Christine Vachon:

Thank you, Lois. I began my career making films for marginalized communities. Stories by, for, and of people who were misunderstood and outside the mainstream.

So much of that has changed. WE have changed, as an industry of artists, and as a society. And change is hard. The world resists change, so it takes the brave and the enlightened to lead the charge toward change.

The animated video that showed earlier tonight ends with the words "When people feel understood, they soar." And that is something that I have looked for in all the movies I've produced a sense of understanding. When we can understand, we can change. And change is the way of all things.

So the things I hear tonight make me proud to be your first media honoree. When you talk about expanding our ideas about what makes a family, and healing broken spirits without regard for some prehistoric notion of "normal," well, I know I am in the company of kindred spirits.

When I hear that Ackerman is deeply focused on serving the very people who might never have access to these world- class services, I know I am in the right place.

And to learn that all of you are here tonight, giving generously to continue Ackerman's mission of "moving families forward," this award takes on added meaning.

So thank you, for this honor, and much more, for all that you are doing to expansively embrace the complexity of the human experience. Thank you.

Academy of Counselors in Japan Visit Ackerman Institute

2011-11-22T11:32:00.004-05:00

The Ackerman Institute for the Family recently hosted visiting students from the Academy of Counselors in Japan. The visit occurred during the week of November 14, 2011, and is part of an on-going relationship between the Ackerman Institute and the Academy of Counselors, developed 10 years ago to provide training in the Ackerman Relational Approach. Thirteen trainees and three administrators took part in a four-day intensive training on family therapy. Faculty member David Kezur works extensively with the Academy, leading intensive training in Japan and at the Ackerman Institute.

A radio interview with faculty member Evan Imber-Black

2011-11-09T10:26:00.002-05:00

Family therapist and author Evan Imber-Black was recently interviewed by Safe Space Radio on how to share secrets in the family. In contrast to televised and sensationalist secret telling in front of mass audiences, Dr. Imber-Black works with families to prepare carefully before revealing important secrets. She tells stories from her work about the impact of secrets on family members, creating ever widening circles of silence and distance in relationships. She describes the impact on children who may not know a secret, but whose behavior is nonetheless deeply effected by the silence. She advises an individual analysis of each family member who may be effected by revealing a secret and how to respect those who may not want it revealed.

Go to their website to listen to Evan Imber-Black's insights: http://safespaceradio.com/2011/10/telling-secrets-in-the-family/

Dr. Loebl Speaks at Fall Alumni Lecture

2011-10-31T16:37:00.003-04:00

On October 21, 2011, the Ackerman Institute presented its fall alumni lecture hosted by the Alumni Association with a presentation by Adi Loebl, faculty at the Institute and the resident psychiatrist. The talk titled, "The Intersection Between Psychiatric Diagnosis, Pharmacological Treatment and Systemic Therapy," focused on how families can be used as a resource in refining diagnosis and treatment and the meaning of taking medicine.

Dr. Loebl mentioned new ways to move away from the classical model of separating individual, family, and psychotherapy into an integrated family process. Some of these ways included involving caregivers in family therapy and increasing accuracy of treatment through how members of the family reveal and describe others' behaviors. He emphasized how families have beliefs pre, during, and post treatment, especially around the idea of being a failure or getting addicted to medications.

"There is a lag between feeling better and acting and behaving better," he explained. "Oftentimes, the person on the medicine still feels depressed but others in the family notice a change." Dr. Loebl also made interesting points on how families often get organized around the "ill" person, and how the ill person in that situation feels an additional pressure to get better. He opened the talk up to discussion and questions on psychopharmacology and family therapy.

Ackerman’s 50 Years, One Historical Conference

2011-10-05T14:36:00.007-04:00

The Ackerman Institute proudly hosted a conference marking its 50 years, with key note speakers in the morning framing the historical value of the Institute in the context of family therapy. The room was packed with nearly 200 participants from all ages and backgrounds, many of them with significant ties to the Institute, including former executive directors Don Bloch and Peter Steinglass, as well as the first Director of Training at the Ackerman Institute, Kitty La Perriere.

“Inceptive, non-derivative, pioneering, and vital – this is the Ackerman Institute for the Family,” said Evan Imber-Black in her speech which opened the conference. Senior faculty member, and Director of the Center for Health and the Family, Evan had the tall task of giving a social history of the last 50 years– contextualizing not only the growth of family therapy and development of the ideas at the Institute, but of the politics, history, and economics of the world at large. Through her engaging slides, people had a chance to really understand how history changed the course of family therapy and vice versa. She ended with an encouraging baton pass to the next generation of therapists: "in a place where passion and curiosity in the service of families is a primary value, I can hardly wait to see what will be next."

Mary-Kim Brewster showed a case demonstrating the strength of the Ackerman Relational Approach. Her case showed the role culture, language, and family of origin processes play in relationships, and as a Senior Faculty Member who is herself bi-cultural, she communicated the importance of understanding and respecting the families’ context when working with the Ackerman Relational Approach.

Jean Malpas’ talk on transgender relationships opened the audience to the new dynamics of gender and sexuality in the 21^st century and how these changes are affecting the field of family therapy and more specifically the task at hand for the Ackerman Institute. His work, which has been shown and presented in Latin America and Europe as well, comes at a significant time as he launches the Gender and Family Project at the Ackerman Institute.

Marcia Sheinberg, Director of Training, put both these cases into context. Although each case appeared to be so different, she was able to show the audience how the Ackerman Relational Approach gives therapists a guide to working with families and yet let’s them attend to the distinctiveness of each family, no matter what their problem or context."Today Jean's and Mary's work demonstrate how Ackerman remains vital and relevant. In both instances, the therapists stimulate us to re-examine our own biases and assumptions, challenging us to think and re-think about our way of working. In so doing we expand our personal and professional lives. It is indeed what keeps the work exciting and continuously evolving."

During the afternoon, attendees split into smaller groups and were able to choose from a myriad of workshop topics. Workshop topics included treating children with relational trauma, working with children and families in foster care, talking with families in the context of chronic illness, engaging parents of troubled adolescents, applying a multi-cultural perspective on jealousy and infidelity, acknowledging social location in therapy, facilitating conversations on money with families, and promoting sensitive and effective parenting with young children.

The day served to contextualize Ackerman's history, mark its contributions to the field of family therapy, and demonstrate its current direction and practice. Everyone left the conference with a new-found knowledge of the huge strides that were made in the last 50 years in the field and were inspired to help make the next 50 just as successful.

Ackerman Institute Welcomes Susan Ciccarone to the Board

2011-07-11T15:20:00.006-04:00

The Ackerman Institute is excited to have Susan Ciccarone, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, as its newest board member. "About a year ago I decided I wanted to get involved outside of my professional career in volunteer work and other purposes," Susan notes of her decision to join the Ackerman Institute Board. Susan was drawn to Ackerman’s three pronged commitment to clinical services, research, and training.

Originally from Philadephia, Susan has been living in New York for 15 years. She started in a number of different organizations, working at UBS Investment Bank for 8 years, and now working at Goldman Sachs. She went to Villanova University for her undergraduate degree where she studied accounting, and received her MBA from The Wharton School in 2002. Susan loves the fast paced and challenging nature of her work, which gives her a chance to work with a diverse group of clients and projects.

This is the first time Susan has been part of a board. "I work with boards frequently, I know what their responsibilities are and I advise management teams on board interactions. But I’ve never been on a board, so this is new and I think it makes it exciting. I want to see how I can be helpful and how I can help the Ackerman Board evolve," Susan mentions. Undoubtedly, her experience working with CEOs, setting up objectives and executing business plans to involve donors and investors, will be a huge asset to the Ackerman Institute.

The Ackerman Institute's value and focus on family is reflected deeply in Susan's own life. While she knows that there are times in her career that would benefit from living abroad (she has travelled to over 30 countries), one thing that has kept her here is being close to her family. Susan comes from a large close knit family who all live in the New York Philadelphia metro Area. "I have four siblings, very close in age, and I consider them my four best friends," she says. "My most fun day is hanging out with my four nephews. My parents just celebrated their 40^th wedding anniversary. They are a huge part of why I could achieve my goals; I had the constant support of my family through the years."

Susan’s values about family are reflected in her following comments, "I always remember where I came from, and how fortunate I am to be able to give back in some way, to utilize my talents in some way, it's something I want to be more focused on. Ackerman is the first step in this part of my life and that development." We are very grateful to have Susan as part of the Ackerman family.

Jean Malpas Receives Early Career Acheivement Award

2011-07-07T15:15:00.006-04:00

Jean Malpas was the recipient of the first American Family Therapy Academy (AFTA) Early Career Achievement Award which recognizes achievement in theory, research, or practice in the first 10 years after earning one’s degree. The award is based on the promise of contribution to the field. Ellen Berman, former Secretary and Board Member of AFTA and current Secretary of the Board of Directors of Family Process, introduced Jean as "the perfect example of this… Jean's s enormous appetite for work, widely ranging quest for knowledge and commitment to community, in addition to his warmth, kindness, elegance, have made him a visible and important member of the field and of AFTA and a wonderful recipient of this award."

Jean trained at Brussels University and NYU, and went to the Ackerman Institute for his postgraduate training from 2000-2005 while he was working as a counselor at the LGBT center in New York. Following his graduation from Ackerman's post graduate training program he joined the faculty where he taught in the clinical externship program. With the support of Ackerman’s senior faculty members, Jean joined AFTA in 2006 and became the first chair of the Early Career Member Committee. In 2010 he was elected to the AFTA Board of Directors.

Jean presented internationally on issues around gender fluidity in Canada, Israel, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Belgium. His publications include Between Pink & Blue: A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Gender Nonconforming Children and their Family to be published in Family Process, and Can Couples Change Gender: Couple Therapy with Transgender People and their Partners which will be published in the Handbook of Affirmative LGBT Couple and Family Therapy.

He has also recently focused on international training and humanitarian work, attending trainings in Uganda, Haiti, and India. Jean is currently working with Ackerman faculty Peggy Papp and Michele Scheinkman on a project on Couples and Impasses. His interests include Addictions Counseling, Couples Therapy, and Gender. Recently he has developed cutting edge work on helping couples deal with gender transitions in their partners and/or children.

As Jean so aptly remarked, "It takes a village to raise a decent family therapist." Jean thanked the Ackerman Institute and AFTA for encouraging him to take risks.

Dr. Peter Fraenkel Releases New Book About Relationships

2011-07-05T11:21:00.004-04:00

Dr. Peter Fraenkel, head of the Center for Work and Family, released his new book for couples, entitled Sync Your Relationship, Save Your Marriage: Four Steps to Getting Back on Track (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan), and it has been gaining attention from the couple therapy community and the media. The book has received highly favorable endorsements from a wide range of therapists, as well as prominent musicians, as the book examines how couple problems often center on differences in rhythms, and how to change time patterns to get in sync.

The Ackerman Institute hosted a book party for Dr. Fraenkel on Thursday, March 31 which was well attended. Audience included faculty members and center heads as well as Ackerman Institute board members. Students from both the Institute's training program as well as from other New York City institutions were present.

On the evening of April 28, Dr. Fraenkel had the honor of speaking at the Yale Club in an event organized by Ackerman board member Alec Haverstick. After a brief presentation by Fraenkel on the ideas in the book, the audience engaged in a lively discussion about the time challenges for couples and families today.

This summer, Dr. Fraenkel will work with some of his Center student-staff to create a workshop for couples on getting in sync. It will be launched at Ackerman in the late fall.

Trainees from Argentina and Chile at the Ackerman Institute

2011-06-13T11:50:00.002-04:00

From April 25 to May 6, the Ackerman Institute proudly hosted its annual two-week intensive training program for a group of 18 therapists from the training programs Instituto Chileno El Terapia Familiar in Santiago, Chile, and AIGLE in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The intensive training program allowed for clinicians from the two institutes to be immersed in the Ackerman Relational Approach. The group of therapists spent the days in workshops presented by Ackerman faculty members, and the evenings observing families during the supervision groups.

Visiting therapists responded eagerly to this year’s series of workshops, which included a range of topics such as Working with Jealousy and Infidelity in Couples Therapy, The Use of Sculpting in Breaking through Impasses, and The Use of Rituals in Family Therapy. One topic which struck a chord in the group was the workshop Working with Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Couples and Families, presented by Jean Malpas. The therapists described the topic as “taboo back home”. After the presentation, group members expressed having a new understanding of how traumatic it can be for family members who identify outside the heterosexual norm to feel unknown by their own family members and marginalized by society at large.

For over fifteen years, Ackerman Institute for the Family and the two South American agencies have collaborated, with Ackerman sharing its knowledge of family therapy through annual training intensives at Ackerman. Additionally, faculty members travel bi-annually to South America to present at both AIGLE and Instituto Chileno El Terapia on topics of interest. The international presentations provides an opportunity for the Ackerman way of working to be shared with the therapists in the international community.

The on-going collaboration with AIGLE and Instituto Chileno El Terapia Familiar is a highly valued component of the Ackerman’s Community and International Training Department. The collaboration allows for Ackerman’s Relational Approach for providing family therapy to reach families throughout the world. Additionally, Ackerman faculty members are provided the opportunity to learn about families and the practices of family therapists internationally, creating on-going opportunities for developing and refining our therapeutic knowledge base. The exchange of ideas around how to provide family therapy creates and environment of mutual exploration and respect that has helped to keep Ackerman Institute for the Family a vital resource in the international family therapy community.

Spring Alumni Lecture by Dr. Tim Verduin

2011-06-08T11:08:00.001-04:00

On May 6, Tim Verduin, PhD, Clinical Director of the Institute for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity and Behavior Disorders, did a presentation to a full house of Ackerman faculty, students, alumni, and professionals on Cognitive Behavioral Practices for Young Children with Behavior Problems, for the quarterly alumni lecture series. Dr. Verduin's focus was on practical tools and principles for parents to apply when handling children with ADHD or disruptive, defiant discipline problems.

Tim talked at length about the benefits of giving a child no attention rather than negative attention, the idea being that children who seek attention through bad behaviors get what they want through parents who give them lots of negative attention. These same children, who are not given the attention they are looking for, often improve their behaviors.

Another interesting facet was studies on positive and negative feedback. People generally believe they give more positive feedback than they actually do, and as human beings it takes three compliments to equalize the effect of one critique. Through the use of tapes and case studies, he pointed out the impact of these simple practices.

Ackerman Institute Diversity and Social Work 2011 Graduation

2011-05-27T14:28:00.002-04:00

The Ackerman Institute's Diversity and Social Work Training Program celebrated the accomplishments of this year’s group of student interns at its annual presentation on May 4, 2011. The program’s mission, in existence since 1992, is to train a critical mass of professionals of color who can serve as leaders in bringing a family-centered approach to community-based social service agencies that is culturally and racially sensitive to the needs of families. Students spend two days at the Institute where their training includes live supervision of family sessions and a day off-site working at a community based organization.

The Program benefits from its long-term partnerships with Hunter, Columbia and New York University Schools of Social Work who help us recruit outstanding students of color, and this year’s cadre was no exception. Denise Munoz, Ria Brown, Daniela Caraballo, Mackenzie Charles, Beatrice Hyacinthe and Katherine Ambia gave outstanding presentations depicting both their clinical work with families by showing brief video edits as well as describing their personal and professional growth throughout the intensive training process at Ackerman.

Sippio Small added: "I would like to acknowledge the third founding member of the social work program, the late Ruth Mohr. She continues to be a guiding influence on how I supervise and interact with the students. One of the first assignments for the students is to view the documentary, Families Under the Influence that features the clinical brilliance of Ruth Mohr."

Students discussed issues as diverse as the complexity of working with a rare, untreatable disease in a young family member to their experience, as young professionals of color, working with their first white family. Students also highlighted the intense bond that they have created with one another; spending every weekend together observing each other's work behind a one-way mirror as well as the six hours of supervision they receive every Monday with the program co-directors, Laurie Kaplan and Sippio Small.

Not only were the presentations packed with information, the house was packed with people. Board member Arthur Maslow, as well as Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, Marcia Sheinberg, Director of Training and faculty members of the Institute were there as well returning program graduates who served as supervisors to the interns in their off-site community placements. Additionally, professors from Hunter, Columbia and NYU and students families and friends were also in attendance.

Diversity and Social Work Alumni Reunion

2011-03-10T13:48:00.002-05:00

On February 25^th, current Diversity and Social Work students joined alumni from past years to share their thoughts on the potential of the alumni network at the Ackerman Institute. Diversity and Social Work Faculty Laurie Kaplan and Sippio Small articulated their desire to hand over the leadership of the alumni relations to the students themselves, so they could take ownership over the group.

Over 30 students met and discussed possible strategies for the group. A few ideas which came up included starting an online listserv for networking, developing a mentorship program for current students with the guidance of past graduates, and creating opportunities for more meetings in informal settings, both in and outside the New York city area.

Past Board Member Arthur Maslow and President and CEO, Lois Braverman, were also in attendance, and expressed their appreciation for the program. Arthur encouraged discourse and discussion about clinical practices amongst alumni.

Alumni enjoyed sharing their stories and updates with their classmates and meeting graduates from other years over dinner. More important, alumni now work in a range of programs and clinics since graduating from Ackerman, some even going on to academia. This inspired many to start bridging connections for the future.

"It is exciting to already have a number of alumni supervising current social work interns in their community placements. We look forward to creating more mentorship opportunities for the students of this program," Laurie Kaplan, LCSW, Co-director Diversity and Social Work Program.

Introducing Alec Haverstick: The Ackerman Institute’s Newest Board Member

2010-12-21T13:07:00.002-05:00

Alec's office reflects his personal values. There are university photos, photos of his family, his three daughters, his son, his wife of 34 years, and, of course, the New York Yankees. His children went to Princeton, Yale, and Georgetown.

Alec Haverstick is the newest member of the Ackerman Institute's board. He has spent more than thirty years listening to and creating solutions for private clients. As Chief Executive Officer of Boxwood, he oversees all client relationships.

Alec grew up largely in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side, and lived in a family community with his maternal grandparents at the center. Alec’s grandfather’s story is one of success. He moved in 1915 to New York at a time when it was unusual for someone from the South to be involved in the New York financial world. Over time he became one of the most successful business men of his generation. He became the chairman of the Guaranty Trust Company, which he helped merge with JP Morgan, was a key figure behind the forming of Coca-Cola, and succeeded Averill Harriman as Chairman of the Illinois Central Railroad. "My parents were divorced so I was raised by my grandmother. I went off to boarding school, then to Yale, Columbia Law School, and after 8 years of law practice in New York City I moved into finance."

Alec began his career as a Trusts & Estates attorney in New York City, and went on to join the financial service side of Wall Street, where he focused on creating financial solutions for wealthy individuals. He was, successively, a Managing Director at Kidder Peabody, Prudential Securities, Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank. In this latter role he created the client services area for families with wealth in excess of one hundred million dollars and led the development of risk mitigation, liability management and liquidity provision techniques for individuals with concentrated and/or inherited wealth.

Alec formed Boxwood Wealth Management in June 2007 as a family advisory firm providing a wide array of expertise to individuals, families and their companies. In May 2008, he refocused the firm as Boxwood Strategic Advisors, LLC.

Alec first encountered the Ackerman Institute through a meeting with Peter Steinglass at Deutsche Bank in a program they ran together on wealth and responsibility. His interest in the work of the Institute was further fueled when he met the current President and CEO, Lois Braverman. Family values run through all aspects of Alec’s life. "I've always focused on being an essential part of a family. I created a business that is based on family principles and works with families... I strongly believe that connectivity is the key to an integrated lifestyle."

Alec is excited to join Ackerman's board and help shape its future. "I am more of a change agent than a quiet participant. And I hope that’s okay. I don't just think outside the box; I tend to operate outside the box as well." His main interest lies in helping the Institute distribute its intellectual capital to the world. He feels that the Ackerman Institute's role in helping families is key to solving the larger economic and social crisis in America. The Institute is “one of the birth places of family therapy… American society is going like this (Alec widens his arms) and the Ackerman Institute can bring it together, in a high impact sort of way in New York City, which is the economic center of the world."
The Ackerman Institute is happy to have Alec Haverstick on its board and looks forward to his help in shaping a vision for the Institute’s future.

Ackerman Institute's 50th Anniversary Gala

2010-10-27T13:27:00.002-04:00

The Ackerman Institute for the Family held its fourth annual Tribute to Families on October 19, 2010, commemorating its 50 years of service. Over 350 people attended the event, co-chaired by Linda Dishy and Judith Stern Peck, and hosted by Actor Sam Waterson. The Gala, held in Gustavino’s near the East River, raised more than $650,000.

In honor of its 50th anniversary, Lois Braverman, President and CEO, paid a leadership tribute to the Ackerman Institute's board chairs that have carried the Institute through each decade of its work. "Every one of them has brought to their role at Ackerman great depth of knowledge and understanding of our work and our challenges. Without them, we could not have grown and thrived as we have for half a century," Braverman remarked. The board chairs honored at the event included Gregory Rogers (2008-present), Jane Donaldson (2003-2008), Arthur Maslow (1999-2003), Donna Laikind (1996-1999), Edwina Millington (1987-1996), Carol Maslow (1982-1987), and Mike Gladstein, the first Board Chair of the Ackerman Institute in 1960 through 1964.

The night consisted of silent, reverse, and live auctions, as well as a performance by the Tokens, the music group behind the hit song, The Lion Sleeps Tonight. The Tokens helped mark the significance of the event as they also turned 50 years old this year as well.

Each year the Ackerman Institute acknowledges a key individual that has contributed to its long standing growth and achievement with its Distinguished Service Award, as well as honoring companies whose business are committed to families and value-centered living. This year, Dorie Kempner was honored with the Ackerman Distinguished Service Award, the Ackerman Corporate Partner Award was given to Dirk Jungé on behalf of Pitcairn, and the Ackerman Family Partner Award was presented to Jay Hughes.

Dorie Kempner has been a member of the Ackerman Institute’s Board since 1996. The Kempner Lecture Series was established at the Ackerman Institute in honor of her late husband, Carl, providing funding for an annual lecture on work in the area of family therapy and chronic or life-threatening illness. She accepted the award for Distinguished Service: "I never imagined that standing up here in front of 400 people would feel like a family reunion, but that's just what it feels like, and, in fact, it's just what it is… I have been involved with many fine causes, but none has resonated as deeply as Ackerman."

Current Board Chair, Gregory Rogers, presented the award to Pitcairn, a financial management company that is a pioneer of the multi-family office. Dirk Jungé, Chairman and CEO of Pitcairn, accepted the Corporate Partner Award on the company’s behalf. Rogers spoke about Pitcairn’s commonalities to the Ackerman Institute: "Dirk Jungé has said that wealth management involves more than just numbers. He believes that family dynamics, particularly improving communication between members of all generations to skirt potential conflicts or face and solve existing ones, is the most critical issue facing the health of a family business today."

The Ackerman Family Partner Award was presented by Gala Co-Chair, Judith Stern Peck, to Jay Hughes, attorney and author of Family Wealth – Keeping It in the Family and his latest Family: The Compact among Generations. Jay Hughes is a well known leader in the wealth management community for his industry-changing ideas. John L. Ward, Clinical Professor of Family Enterprises at the Kellogg School of Management, calls him "the wisest of counselors to successful families" and Judith Stern Peck added that, "he is also the wisest of mentors to me as well as to my professional colleagues."

Over the past year, the Ackerman Institute has experienced unprecedented demand for clinic services: 5,500 clinic sessions – over 1,500 more than the year before. Most of the families are from economically and socially marginalized communities and face increased stress in this tough economy, but no family is ever refused services because of an inability to pay. The Annual Gala helps support these services.

Feet First into Social Work and Diversity Internship

2010-10-07T11:29:00.004-04:00

An Intern's Perspective of the Diversity and Social Work Training
By Denise Munoz

Summer came and went. With a summer internship and a summer class, I can say that with the exception of the warm months, summer, as conceived by students on break, was never mine. With the beginning of classes and my first day of internship fast approaching I could only think "I'm not ready…just 2 more weeks." Interestingly, I wasn’t nervous about beginning my internship, just anxious about creating a schedule that would allow for self care. Giving up your Friday evenings and Saturdays is part of the Social Work Diversity Internship. This is not to say that my weekends were free prior to beginning Ackerman, but I had options. Now, for the next nine months my weekends would be spent at 149 East 78th street.

I was not worried about my sessions being taped or that a team would be watching me through a two way mirror observing my work, but I was curious and anxious about who my co-therapist would be. Yes, co-therapist: the Diversity and Social Work Internship is unique in that it requires students to work in teams. Two therapists per family/couple treated, a true example that two heads are better than one. Never having worked in this manner and understanding that energy flows between two people may possibly affect the therapeutic relationship, I was obsessing about my potential co-therapist. I perceived this person as my partner for the next 9 months, for better or for worst, in the process that is the diversity training program.

Three weeks into my internship I can say that although I am aware that as cases are assigned the semester becomes more demanding, for now the experience has been a smooth transition. The passing weeks have been filled with connecting with my fellow colleagues and supervisors, foundations class, videos, and our first case. Since I don’t have any cases yet, I do not know who will be my co-therapists. (Co-therapist plural, because I will a different co-therapist for each of the 3-4 cases I am assigned.) I look forward to working with any of my colleagues; the past 3 weeks has allowed me to get to know them and show me how much I can learn from each.

I have fantasized about training at Ackerman Institute since taking my first course in family therapy 5 years ago, and, yes, the professor was Ackerman trained (hmmmm, what would Freud have to say about that one). Has my time at Ackerman (to this point) met my expectations, fantasies and all? Yes, and I am loving every minute of it. Although I must admit, Mondays I'm at Ackerman from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and while we do get breaks, by the end of the day my mind feels scrambled. I guess in the big picture of life a scrambled brain is worth the training.

Standing along a pool of water, timid, with one toe barely touching the water, I am now ready to jump wholeheartedly, feet first.

Diana Fosha Speaks on Healing Affects and Interactions in AEDP

2010-02-09T12:07:00.001-05:00

Dr. Diana Fosha (second from right) with Candace Goldberg, Brenda Shrobe and David Kezur

Dr. Diana Fosha, one of the leading contributors to contemporary affect theory, addressed the process of change and its role in therapy at a packed Alumnae/i Association lecture at the Ackerman Institute on January 29.

Dr. Fosha said that while the development of psychotherapy has supported the creation of a lexicon to explain how things change for the worse (i.e., the theory of the development of psychopathology), there is far less understanding and less of a vocabulary to explain how change actually takes place, the process and specific mechanisms of change. To do so, she introduced the motivational construct of "transformance" as the counterpoint of resistance. She said that psychic processes, which operate under the umbrella of "transformance," tend to be "progressive, expansive, energetic and fueled by hope." Transformance-informed processes are always accompanied by positive affect, Dr. Fosha explained, although that does not necessarily mean happiness. She said that the positive affect that grows out of transformance is closer to a sense of peace or rightness.

Dr. Fosha led her audience through a discussion of the seven fundamental aspects of AEDP (accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy): healing, attachment, dyadic affect regulation, experience, emotion, positive affects and positive affective interactions, and transformation.

Healing addresses the idea that people are not just "bundles of pathology," but beings with innate, wired-in dispositions for self-healing, Dr. Fosha said. Because AEDP is healing oriented, rather than psychopathology-based, the therapy seeks to entrain adaptive affective change process in which the therapist and patient work together to harness the healing potential of change.

Attachment recognizes that people are wired to care, Dr. Fosha said. She explained that the AEDP therapist works to facilitate and co-construct a patient-therapist relationship characterized by secure attachment. This relationship is the secure base from which fear, shame and distress can be dyadically regulated.When operating optimally, she continued, dyadic affect regulation is a process that ultimately ensures that the patient in therapy is not alone with intense emotional experiences, but able to share them with a partner (the therapist), who can support, be there and help in the processing of these emotions to completion.

The overall goal of AEDP, Dr. Fosha said, is to facilitate a new healing experience that involves a transformation achieved through the moment-to-moment tracking of bodily-rooted emotional experience. The experiential method allows the patient to have an experience in which the body is involved and tracking moment-to-moment fluctuations is the emotional experience of the patient, therapist, and dyad.

Emotion or the visceral experience of core affects is the central agent of change in AEDP. Positive affects and positive affective interactions are both the constituents and the wired-in affective markers of healing transformational processes and adaptive experiences.

In the end, Dr. Fosha noted that focusing on, affirming, and experientially exploring the experience of transformation led to the discovery that the experiential exploration of transformation is, in itself, an affective change process.

Dr. Fosha used a 45-minuted tape of her work with a young female patient to illustrate many of her points. Although the session was short, it demonstrated clearly how Dr. Fosha, using the techniques she described earlier, was able to help her patient move from a very angry, emotionally withdrawn state to one in which she was able to access her feelings, let go of a good deal of her anger, and emerge in a place of calm, ease, self-acceptance and new understanding, almost a wisdom of sorts.

Dr. Fosha said that as a person processes transformation, another change process is launched. This processing of that which is therapeutic, or metatherapeutic processing, makes the implicit explicit and the explicit experiential. It leads ultimately, Dr. Fosha explained, to a core state of openness, compassion and self-compassion, and a sense of things feeling right.

If you would like to learn more about Dr. Fosha’s AEDP, please visit http://www.aedpinstitute.com/.

Bright Beginnings/Personal Best Awarded Renewal Grant from Robin Hood Foundation

2010-02-08T14:22:00.001-05:00

Bright Beginnings and Personal Best – two programs developed by the Ackerman Institute’s Center for the Developing Child and Family – have been awarded a $200,000 renewal grant from the Robin Hood Foundation. This latest grant brings the total of Robin Hood support for these programs since 2004 to $1 million.

Bright Beginnings and Personal Best are both prevention programs for families with young children. Bright Beginnings, developed by Center Director Martha Edwards, PhD, is designed to promote the children’s mental health and school readiness. Originally developed and implemented in the New York City public schools, Bright Beginnings consists of a manualized curriculum of 36 sessions, starting in pregnancy, and then continuing until the child is three years old. Personal Best, developed by Center Associate Director Judy Grossman, DrPH, is a 16-session curriculum designed to help parents enhance their parenting skills and to promote their mental health, social support and self-efficacy.

Both curricula are part of a continuum of programs developed by the Center for the Developing Child and Family to help parents of infants, toddlers, preschool and elementary school children strengthen parent-child and family-school relationships. The Center’s goal, through all of its activities, is to support families and schools to nurture children’s developmental competencies, school readiness, and school success.

"We are deeply grateful for the very generous support the Robin Hood Foundation has provided to us," Martha Edwards commented. "Our goal was to train and provide support to program staff in community agencies so that they actually are the ones implementing the programs with families at a high level of quality. We wanted these skills to reside in the community agencies so that the programs can be sustained in the future. Not only have the Robin Hood grants enabled us to accomplish that goal, they also provided support for an independent evaluation that documented that staff has developed a high level of expertise in implementing Bright Beginnings/Personal Best."

With support from Robin Hood, the Center has trained staff at three agencies: the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services, University Settlement House, and Child Center of New York.

Founded in 1988, the Robin Hood Foundation is dedicated to supporting programs and organizations that fight poverty in New York City. On its website, the Foundation states that "Our philosophy is simple: to significantly affect people living in poverty you have to attack its root causes. That’s why Robin Hood focuses on poverty prevention through programs in early childhood, youth, education, jobs and economic security."

The Foundation notes that Bright Beginnings/Personal Best "… aims to improve parents' ability to nurture their children, an approach shown to reduce child abuse and neglect as well as improve children's cognitive development and later achievement." The Foundation says that Bright Beginnings/Personal Best realizes that goal by promoting "…two key outcomes that improve the chances of a child graduating from high school: a high-quality home environment and a strong parent-baby relationship."

"The data collected at the three sites supported by Robin Hood shows that Bright Beginnings/Personal Best has a definite positive impact on families struggling with poverty," Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, said. "We know that the family is the single greatest resource available to individuals coping with all kinds of concerns, including the wide variety of challenges caused by poverty. Bright Beginnings/Personal Best is playing a significant role in helping families harness and strengthen their existing resources and make a stronger community."

If you would like to support the implementation of these programs in other sites around New York City, click here, and select Center for the Developing Child and Family from the drop down box on the Donations Page.

Fresh Start Program Receives $75,000 Grant from HELP USA

2010-01-13T10:05:00.002-05:00

Dr. Peter Fraenkel, Director of
Ackerman's Center for Work and Family

The Fresh Start for Families Program has received a $75,000 grant from HELP USA, the organization that operates the homeless shelter where Fresh Start is provided.

Fresh Start for Families is a program developed by the Ackerman Institute’s Center for Work and Family. The Center provides programs for families living in homeless shelters, including families surviving domestic abuse and recent immigrant families. The Director of the Center is Dr. Peter Fraenkel. "Fresh Start helps poor mothers cope more successfully with the challenges of homelessness, life in homeless shelters and making the transition from welfare to work," Dr. Fraenkel explained. The program is offered at HELP Harbor, a domestic violence shelter in Manhattan, administered by HELP USA, well-known as one of the primary providers of housing and support services for the homeless in the United States.

In the Ackerman Institute – HELP USA partnership, HELP operates the homeless shelter and its employment, social service support and housing placement programs, while the Center for Work and Family provides the family support program and research evaluation. The partnership was initiated after HELP USA discovered that parent-child relationship difficulties often impede the ability of mothers in shelters to take full advantage of housing and employment services. Distracted by difficulties managing their own and their children's behavioral and emotional problems, the women often did not complete job readiness courses, job training or placements, missed crucial meetings with social service staff and did not follow through with housing appointments. Fresh Start was designed to fill a critical need for family emotional support and parent guidance.

"Our program is unique because most shelter programs focus on education or job training, and almost none address mental health issues from a family systems perspective,” Dr. Fraenkel said. “Fresh Start at HELP Harbor uses a variety of activities to help the families examine the emotions they experience and explores ways that they can manage difficult emotions, individually and as a family. The Program helps increase mothers’ awareness of their children’s emotions, expand the children’s ability to express themselves, and enhance the entire family’s ability to cope with stress."

"We are very pleased that HELP USA continues to partner with Ackerman at HELP Harbor," Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, said. "The Institute has been involved in community programs for many years and the Fresh Start program allows us to work with some of New York City’s most vulnerable families. Most traditional programs dealing with domestic violence are expert-driven models in which therapists teach parenting and coping skills. The drop-out rate from such programs can be high, as the women involved often feel they are being ‘talked down to’ and being taught skills that they already know. Fresh Start makes use of a collaborative and respectful stance that discovers and supports women’s hidden strengths, and allows them to teach and support each other. As a result, women simultaneously learn new skills and regain their sense of competence and pride."

In addition to helping families, Fresh Start provides a unique opportunity to train the next generation of mental health professionals in community-based work with underserved families. During its 12 years, the program has been staffed by more than 100 Ackerman students and alumni, and graduate students in counseling and clinical psychology at The City College of New York, where Dr. Fraenkel is an associate professor. An upcoming article in the American Family Therapy Monographs by Dr. Fraenkel and his staff describes how students learn important skills and develop greater appreciation of the challenges and strengths of highly stressed families.

"This project has produced several outstanding dissertations and Masters theses," Dr. Fraenkel said, "but more importantly, it’s inspired many young professionals to dedicate their careers to work with families in poverty."

If you would like to support the Fresh Start program, click here, and select Center for Work and Family from the drop down box on the Donations Page.

Robert Ruckh Joins Ackerman Board

2010-01-12T14:50:00.001-05:00

Robert Ruckh joined the Ackerman Institute Board of Directors in December 2009.

Mr. Ruckh brings major, significant financial experience to the Board. With more than 27 years of experience in the field, he is one of the more experienced Transaction Advisory Services partners in Ernst & Young’s New York office. He joined Ernst & Young in 2002 after almost 20 years at Arthur Andersen in audit and transactions practices.

Mr. Ruckh's primary private equity clients include Lindsay Goldberg, CCMP Capital, Cerberus and Onex. His corporate clients include General Electric. Mr. Ruckh's transaction specific experience includes work in industrial and consumer products and services, distribution businesses, healthcare, service businesses and technology. In addition to direct platform investments made by private equity clients, Mr. Ruckh has also worked with the management teams of many portfolio companies. He has participated in diligence projects in more than 15 countries, and has extensive experience with SEC securities offerings and 144A private placements of both US and non-US companies.

Before joining Ernst & Young, Mr. Ruckh helped start Arthur Andersen's Transaction Advisory Services practice. Prior to that, he worked in Andersen's audit practice for 12 years, serving a number of Global 1000 and other multinational clients.

Mr. Ruckh is a 1982 graduate of Fordham University and a former Member of the Dean’s Advisory Board for the Fordham University Schools of Business.

He lives in Pound Ridge, New York with his wife Shari and daughter Amelia.

"We are thrilled to have Robert Ruckh join the Ackerman Board," Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, commented. "His interest in our work is very strong, and his expertise in finance helps strengthen the Board significantly."

Meet Our Board: Paul H. Rich

2010-01-12T14:46:00.002-05:00

New Board Member Paul H. Rich

The ideal Board of Directors of a non-profit organization includes individuals with expertise and experience in a variety of fields, including law, finance and real estate. Paul H. Rich, who joined the Ackerman Institute Board of Directors in 2007, is a seasoned consultant who has worked for many years with family-owned and closely-held businesses. As a co-managing principal of the Rothstein Kass Business Consulting Group, Mr. Rich provides a wide range of strategic business counseling services. He is an expert in succession planning, structuring and negotiating mergers and acquisitions, facilitating as an executive coach for business owners and high net worth individuals. In addition, he has extensive experience securing bank and private financing and rendering IPO and private placement advisory services. Mr. Rich’s success is the result of a passion for his clients, clarity of mind, an appreciation of service, and, most importantly, empathy that he combines with his technical expertise. These traits also serve Mr. Rich well in his role as a member of the Ackerman Institute Board of Directors.

Mr. Rich recalled that he first heard about the Ackerman Institute from his wife Diane, a social worker, and her colleagues.

"They all knew about the work of the Institute and thought very highly of it," Mr. Rich explained. "Then Judith Stern Peck told me about her involvement and the great respect she had for the Institute. Eventually, I met Peter Steinglass and Lois Braverman and learned more."

"I've always been interested in psychology," Mr. Rich said, "and I found the Institute’s work very meaningful. My interest only increased as I learned how much the Institute helps the community."

Mr. Rich’s enthusiasm for the Ackerman Institute grew as he enrolled in the core Foundations course.

"I took the course for one year as a learning and growth experience," he said. "The teaching was amazing and the open thinking and depth was mind expanding. I fell in love with the level of education as well as with the value of the community work."

A native of Paterson, New Jersey, Mr. Rich is a graduate of New York University. He also enrolled in graduate courses at Pace University. Mr. Rich’s family had a business, which he was involved in for a time, where he gained valuable business knowledge as well as insight into some of the emotional issues endemic to family businesses. After he liquidated that business he became a certified public accountant, eventually becoming co-senior equity partner of a large regional accounting firm which was the result of a merger of a medium-size CPA firm that he co-founded. He also co-founded a successful management consulting firm, which now operates as Rothstein Kass' Business Consulting Group.

"In accounting, many of the issues you face, even though they are business issues, have psychological underpinnings," Mr. Rich said. "I am very interested in the psychology of business, how decisions that appear rational on the surface often come from a deep emotional place."

As a Board member, Mr. Rich focuses on financial concerns, but he also is very involved with planning.

"The most fun is being part of the long-range planning committee," he remarked. "We are trying to answer questions such as, where is the future of Ackerman? How can we help the community? How can we grow? I believe Ackerman needs to grow because it offers so much to the community and can really benefit so many families."

Jane Phillips Donaldson Receives 2009 Arthur Maslow Distinguished Service Award

2010-01-12T14:40:00.001-05:00

Jane Phillips Donaldson (pictured here with Lois Braverman), the recipient of the Arthur Maslow Distinguished Service Award, joined Ackerman’s Board of Directors in 2000 and served as Chair from 2003 to 2008. During her tenure as Chair, she successfully guided the Institute in succession planning, steered it through the current economic downturn, expanded its international presence and helped attract vibrant new Board members to help Ackerman meet the challenges of the future.

Ms. Donaldson is the founder of Phillips Oppenheim, a nationally recognized search firm that identifies and recruits staff, particularly minorities, for large foundations and other nonprofit organizations.

S. Alexander Haverstick II Receives 2009 Ackerman Corporate Award

2010-01-12T14:35:00.002-05:00

Alec Haverstick with
Ackerman CEO Lois Braverman

S. Alexander Haverstick II, this year’s recipient of the Ackerman Corporate Award, began his career as a Trusts & Estates attorney and later worked in financial services on Wall Street. He was, successively, a Managing Director at Kidder Peabody, Prudential Securities, Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank, and served as President of Morgan Stanley Trust Company.

Mr. Haverstick founded Boxwood Wealth Management in 2007 and refocused the company as Boxwood Strategic Advisors LLC in 2008. Mr. Haverstick’s approach to business encompasses the idea that individuals’ financial decisions are not made independent of family dynamics.

His ability to "think outside the box" gives him great insight into the communication and relationship issues Ackerman sees in families everywhere. Mr. Haverstick has extended himself to the Institute in countless ways, becoming a great and valued friend to Ackerman.

Tribute to Families Raises More than $495,000 in Support of the Ackerman Institute

2010-01-12T14:23:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the generosity of its friends and supporters, the Ackerman Institute for the Family’s third annual Tribute to Families Gala raised more than $495,000 in support of the Institute’s programs and services. More than 230 guests attended the October 20th event, held at Guastavino’s. The Gala was co-chaired by Ackerman Board members Diana Benzaquen and Alan Quasha. Ackerman Board Chair Greg Rogers and his wife, Dana, were the Honorary Chairs. Law and Order star Sam Waterston was the evening’s emcee and Broadway and cabaret actress and singer Christine Andreas performed.

This year’s honorees were Jane Phillips Donaldson, former chair of the Ackerman Board, who received the Arthur Maslow Distinguished Service Award, and S. Alexander Haverstick II, Chief Executive Officer of Boxwood Strategic Advisors LLC, who received the Ackerman Corporate Partner Award.

After welcoming the guests to the Gala, Ms. Benzaquen described the work of the Ackerman Institute.

“I’ve seen the work they do at Ackerman,” she commented, “and the results are phenomenal. Ackerman helps give families the strength to communicate with each other in a way where everyone can feel connected… children to parents, sibling to sibling, wife to husband, partner to partner. It’s often hard to talk to the people we’re closest to about the things that trouble us most deeply, but Ackerman therapists have the ability to help people feel safe to open up about things they could never have told their family members before.”

The Tribute this year included a silent and a live auction. In addition, the evening featured a reverse auction, the proceeds of which benefitted the Ackerman Clinic. In his remarks, Mr. Waterston described the work of the Ackerman Institute Clinic.

“Here in New York, the Clinic is open 12 to 13 hours a day during the work week and eight hours on Saturdays, to make services available for families no matter what their schedule. On any given day, therapists may be working with a couple on the verge of divorce, a family torn apart by incest or abuse, a teenager who suffers from depression and suicidal thoughts or a child who is failing in school,” Mr. Waterston said. “The ripple effect is enormous because the repercussions of family problems echo well beyond the family circle. We bring them with us into all our relationships, into the school, the workplace, government, commercial centers, sports… into every aspect of our lives. Strong families mean strong communities… and that’s what Ackerman helps create.”

Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, presented several video vignettes that illustrated the work undertaken with families and children at the Clinic and spoke about the value of family therapy.

“We find that when we get all family members involved in the process, whatever the problem, it gets resolved faster and family members feel more connected to one another,” she explained.

“The Ackerman Institute is very privileged to have so many generous and caring friends,” Ms. Braverman, said. “The work we do at Ackerman is vitally important and we absolutely could not do it without the support of our Board and our friends.”

Click here to view photos of the Tribute to Families.

Japanese Colleagues Visit Ackerman

2009-11-30T12:45:00.000-05:00

A group of 13 colleagues from the Academy of Counselors in Japan, along with several Academy faculty members and translators, visited the Ackerman Institute for training in mid-November. The Academy of Counselors has participated in Ackerman's international training program for many years.

Dr. Richard Brown Presents “Breath-Mind-Body” at Alumnae/i Meeting

2009-11-30T12:35:00.001-05:00

Dr. Richard P. Brown (second from left) with Alumnae/i Association vice president
Candice Goldberg, president Brenda Shrobe and faculty liaison David Kezur

An enthusiastic capacity crowd filled the Ackerman Institute Library on Friday, November 20th for a two-hour lecture/workshop on “Breath-Mind-Body” presented by Dr. Richard P. Brown, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University. The author of How to Use Herbs, Nutrients and Yoga in Mental Health Care, Dr. Brown teaches Aikido (4th Dan), yoga and meditation, and integrates psychopharmacology and CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) in his work.

While using various breathing techniques in therapy requires a significant amount of expertise and practice, Dr. Brown told the audience that their participation in the workshop would serve as a good introduction. He said that clients come to therapy very stressed and the therapist often absorbs a lot of that stress. Audience members offered several definitions of stress, including “a tightening feeling” and “a refusal to accept what is.” Dr. Brown defined stress as “any change that happens” and, he added, “change happens all the time.”

Our systems are good at buffering us against change, Dr. Brown explained. The human stress response system consists of two parts: activation and inhibition. Most people are in stress overdrive, he continued, and only recharge once in a while. People can learn to turn the stress down and recharge to achieve balance.

The simplest way to accomplish this is through breathing, Dr. Brown said. He added that yoga is even more effective at recharging the system and qiquong even more effective than yoga, but these other techniques require an investment of time that may not be available. Breathing techniques are more readily accessible.

Focusing on breathing, Dr. Brown noted that a normal person takes 15 to 18 breaths per minute. If a person is able to slow that down to five to six breaths per minute, their heart and brain systems will quickly begin to resemble those of a baby (no stress).

The human body likes comfort and regulation, Dr. Brown said. The mind, however, likes action and stimulation and the heart likes connection. As a result, people are often going in three very different directions at the same time and only rarely are all these directions synchronized.

Dr. Brown commented that our minds are not usually totally in the present; part of the mind is often in the future (resulting in worry) or the past (resulting in regret). Movement, breathing and meditation in sequence can relieve stress and also contribute to general good health. Dr. Brown said that breathing, meditation, yoga, herbs and nutrients can play a key role in the treatment not only of stress, but also of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, mass trauma, schizophrenia, cognitive disorders, traumatic brain injury, attention deficit disorder and other conditions.

During the second hour of his presentation, Dr. Brown led the group in a series of breathing and movement exercises.

After the lecture, many of the participants expressed their enthusiasm for the subject and presenter.

“I wanted to learn how to approach bringing breathing techniques into my work and get some tools and tips about how to stay centered myself,” one participant said. “This lecture really helped with both.”

Dr. Brown will return to the Ackerman Institute on Friday, April 16, 2010 to lead a full day (10 am to 4 pm) workshop: BREATHWORK AND MEDITATION FOR THERAPISTS: Integrate Stress-Reduction Techniques into your Practice. The tuition for this workshop is $125; participants can earn five CE credits. For more information or to register contact Suna Elmas at 212 879-4900, ext 111 or email training@ackerman.org.

Women's Ministry of Malaysia Visits Ackerman

2009-06-18T12:45:00.000-04:00

Two deputies from the Women's Ministry of Malaysia visited the Ackerman Institute on April 2nd. The deputies discussed mental health issues in their country with Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute.

Visitors from Argentina

2009-06-18T12:37:00.000-04:00

Argentinian colleagues with Catherine Lewis, far left,
Director of Community and International Training

Thirteen colleagues from Argentina came to the Ackerman Institute for two weeks of training from April 27th to May 8th. Faculty member Mary Kim Brewster and her husband, Blair Brewster, Secretary of the Ackerman Board of Directors, graciously hosted a dinner at their home in Brooklyn for the group. Faculty member Judith Stern Peck also hosted a dinner for the group.

Alumnae/i Association Wrap-Up

2009-06-18T12:31:00.000-04:00

The Ackerman Alumnae/i Association presented its final program of the 2008-09 academic year on Friday, June 12. The program was a lecture by Martha Edwards, PhD, and Gillian Walker, LCSW, on Working with Affect: A Work in Progress.

In an introduction to the topic, Dr. Edwards explained that for many years, she considered thought and emotion separate entities. A discussion with her own therapist led her to a “huge revelation” that “every thought has a feeling.” As a result, she learned to integrate thought and feeling.

Ms. Walker said she generally disliked going to workshops, but was persuaded to attend one a few years ago that was led by Diana Fosha, author of The Transformational Power of Affect. Ms. Walker said the work done by Ms. Fosha was “the most loving work I’d ever seen with patients.” She added that working with affect is “utterly challenging, fascinating, transformative.”

Dr. Edwards then explained that the word emotion means to set in motion. Affect, she explained, helps people move and is wired in them. It is, she added, “what makes us feel alive.”

In working with affect, Dr. Edwards said, it is helpful to conceptualize a triangle of conflict with affect at the bottom. Her goal, she said, is to help her patients drop down into core affect. Often, this is difficult to accomplish because as the patient gets closer, s/he often is overcome with anxiety and institutes defenses. The solution for the therapist is to slow the entire process down. It is essential to help patients feel safe so they can drop down.

Ms.Walker demonstrated how the use of a genogram can help a therapist find explanations for the exclusion of affect. She added that the therapist is an attachment figure and working with affect is about repairing attachment. When you work with couples, she explained, you start the repair and then return it to them and they repair each other.

The other lectures presented this year were:

Understanding the Nature of the Risk: Building Support for Children and Families in Distress with Pedro A. Noguera, PhD, professor, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University; Executive Director, Metropolitan Center for Urban Education; and Co-Director, Institute for the study of Globalization and Education in Metropolitan Settings, on October 23, 2008.

Back by Popular Demand: Case consultations with Ackerman Faculty with Mary Kim Brewster, PhD, Fiona True, LMSW, and Dee Watts Jones, PhD, on January 23, 2009.

Family Therapy with One Person: Coaching Individual Clients Toward Change in Family Relationships with Richard Johnson, PhD, LCSW, Director of Training, Jewish Child Care Association and professor, Columbia University School of Social Work, on March 6, 2009.

David Kezur, faculty liaison for the Association, announced in May that Brenda Shrobe and Candice Goldberg agreed to continue to serve President and Vice President of the Alumnae/i Association for an additional year while the search continued for new officers. A resolution proposing the suspension of the term limits, as stated in the By-Laws of the Association, was voted on at the June 12th meeting.

“This past year has very successful for the Alumnae/I Association program,” Brenda Shrobe said. “Membership continues to grow and the attendance at our meetings is significant. Candice and I are both delighted to serve for an extra year.”

In Memoriam: Marcia Stern

2009-06-18T12:28:00.000-04:00

The Ackerman Institute for the Family was deeply saddened by the passing of Dr. Marcia Stern on Tuesday, March 17, 2009. Dr. Stern passed away at her home in Arizona after a courageous battle against brain cancer.

“Marcia Stern was a highly respected and beloved colleague who devoted many years to the Ackerman Institute,” Lois Braverman, President of Ackerman, said. “She will be greatly missed, not only by our faculty and students, but also by the many teachers, parents and children who benefitted from her work through the years.”

As a psychologist, family therapist, and international workshop leader, Dr. Stern’s professional life was dedicated to helping children develop critically important social and emotional skills. Dr. Stern was the developer and director of Competent Kids/Caring Classrooms (CKCC), a primary prevention program for grades K-5. CKCC is a lively, interactive program that uses innovative tools, didactic instruction, puppets and original characters, music, movement, role playing, class discussion, and modeling by teachers and peers to promote children’s social-emotional competence and academic achievement. CKCC achieves this outcome by teaching children social-emotional competencies while simultaneously building caring connections within the school, and between home and school.

“Marcia knew children like no one else,” her close friend and colleague, Martha Edwards, Director of the Center for the Developing Child and Family, said. “ Her decades of experience as a teacher, guidance counselor, and school psychologist were ‘in her bones’ as she sat with children who struggled at home or in school. To this practical wisdom, she added an amazingly broad understanding of child development and neurobiology. With all of this as a foundation, she brought her wonderful spirit of playfulness, creativity and versatility that children (and their parents) found irresistible.”

Following Dr. Stern’s passing in March, the Ackerman Institute established the Marcia Stern Fund to honor her memory and continue her work. The Marcia Stern Fund will provide awards for training opportunities for educators to learn about children and their families. To date, the Fund has received more than $6,000 in gifts.

Donations to the Marcia Stern Fund are welcome. To contribute, please send your check, payable to the Ackerman Institute for the Family and with the Marcia Stern Fund written on the memo line, to Development Office, Ackerman Institute for the Family, 149 East 78th Street, New York, NY 10075.

You also may make your contribution online by going to Giving Opportunities on the Ackerman Institute website and clicking on the Marcia Stern Fund in the box titled Type of Donation.

Remembering Olga Silverstein

2009-06-18T12:26:00.000-04:00

On February 24, 2009, the field of family therapy lost a giant and the Ackerman Institute lost a great and inspirational colleague when Olga Silverstein died at the age of 87.

Family, friends and colleagues gathered in the Ackerman library on March 25th to share their memories of Ms. Silverstein and to celebrate her life and work.

Evan Imber-Black, who served as moderator of the memorial service, recalled being inspired by Ms. Silverstein at the beginning of her own career.

“I saw Olga on tape and thought I want to be able to do that someday,” Ms. Imber-Black said. Later on, she found herself presenting at a conference with Ms. Silverstein, who provided her with a plan for her talk. “I didn’t use the plan and for 25 years, Olga stayed mad at me,” Ms. Imber-Black commented.

Almost every speaker remembered Olga Silverstein as a woman with an enormous sense of humor and fun, as well as her strong opinions. But above all, she was remembered as an extraordinarily perceptive and gifted therapist.

Ms. Imber-Black concluded her remarks with a memory that she felt really defined Ms. Silverstein. Ms. Imber-Black and Ms. Silverstein, along with several other people, were visiting a garden where they were given honey water to offer to hummingbirds flying around them. While everyone else thrashed their arms back and forth in an attempt to bring the honey water to the birds, Ms. Silverstein sat still, held out the honey water and waited for the hummingbirds to come to her. “That’s who she was,” Ms. Imber-Black said.

Peggy Papp described Ms. Silverstein as her “closest and dearest friend for 30 years. She was like a sister, like the Rock of Gibralter.” Ms. Papp then presented a slide show series of humorous drawings illustrating her adventures through the years with Ms. Silverstein. The drawings clearly demonstrated both Ms. Silverstein’s humor and her special talent as a therapist.

“I was so privileged to get to know her and she so enriched my life,” Ms. Papp said.

Peter Fraenkel provided a video clip of Ms. Silverstein in which she spoke about her view of family therapy. Ms. Silverstein said her approach was intuitive rather than theoretical and that she believed in trying many different things. She also said she believed that “the less intervention the better” because “people need to be in charge of their own lives.”

Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, and several other speakers, all noted that Olga Silverstein was an inspirational teacher who encouraged her students to have greater confidence in themselves. Ms. Braverman said that when she first began her tenure as president of Ackerman, Ms. Silverstein, whom she had known for 20 years by then, came to her first meeting with the faculty.

“I always felt Olga was there behind me in my work,” Ms. Braverman said, “and I am so grateful to her for that.”

Echoing many other comments, Gillian Walker noted that, ”I wouldn’t be a family therapist if it wasn’t for Olga. She made us love the field as passionately as she did.”

“We all though of Olga as our mother and grandmother,” Pat Heller commented. “We thought she was magic.”

The Ackerman Institute has established the Olga Silverstein Training Award to honor the memory of Ms. Silverstein. The Award will be presented annually to a gifted student who has completed the live clinical part of Ackerman’s training program and who is entering the first-year externship. Donors may contribute to the Award fund by mailing a check, payable to the Ackerman Institute for the Family and with the Olga Silverstein Training Award written on the memo line, to Development Office, Ackerman Institute for the Family, 149 East 78th Street, New York, NY 10075 or by visiting Giving Opportunities on the Ackerman Institute website and clicking on the Olga Silverstein Training Award in the box titled Type of Donation.

Dr. Peter Steinglass Honored by Freedom Institute

2009-06-18T12:22:00.000-04:00

Abbe and Peter Steinglass

Dr. Peter Steinglass, Director of Ackerman’s Center for Substance Abuse and the Family and President Emeritus, was honored by the Freedom Institute at its annual Mona Mansell Award Dinner at the Hotel Pierre on May 11th. The Mansell Award, named for Freedom’s founder, is given annually to an honoree deemed to have significantly advanced the field of substance abuse treatment.

In her remarks introducing Dr. Steinglass, Connie Murray, the Executive Director Emeritus of the Institute, said the Institute selected Dr. Steinglass as this year’s award recipient because of his decades of research and clinical contributions toward an understanding of the importance of family factors in substance abuse treatment.

Dr. Steinglass served as the Ackerman Institute’s third Executive Director and later as its President and CEO. He became President Emeritus in August 2005. During his career, Dr. Steinglass has won numerous awards for his work in academic psychiatry and for his clinical and research collaborations with medical and mental health institutions, including the Distinguished Contribution to Family Therapy Research Award from the American Family Therapy Academy. Dr. Steinglass also was a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

The Freedom Institute was founded in 1976 as a not-for-profit resource center for individuals and families affected by alcohol and drug dependency. The Institute offers a comprehensive program of family consultations, interventions, assessments, individual and group counseling and referral to Inpatient treatment centers. One of Ackerman’s alumnae, Mary McAllister, has developed a thriving family program at Freedom, with Ackerman faculty providing advanced supervision to her clinical team.

“We are so pleased that the Freedom Institute has recognized Peter for his very large and significant body of work,” Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, said. “This honor is very well deserved and I know that everyone at Ackerman joins me in offering congratulations to Peter.”

Matthew J. Leeds Joins Ackerman Board

2009-06-18T12:18:00.000-04:00

Matthew J. Leeds joined the Ackerman Institute for the Family’s Board of Directors in December 2008. Mr. Leeds is a real estate lawyer whose diverse practice includes the representation of owners, developers, sponsors, condominium and cooperative boards, investors and institutional real estate lenders. He has particular experience in the burgeoning area of commercial condominiums.

Mr. Leeds is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. A frequent lecturer and writer, he is a co-author of New York Practice Guide: Real Estate: Cooperatives and Condominiums, published by Matthew Bender. He is a former Chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Real Property Section and Condominiums and Cooperatives Committee. In 1999, he was elected to the American College of Real Estate Lawyers. He is been named in Best Lawyers in America and New York Super Lawyers.

Mr. Leeds began his law career as a Special Deputy Attorney General in the New York State Department of Law’s Real Estate Financing Bureau. He joined Ganfer & Shore, LLP in 2008 after 24 years with Robinson Silverman Pearce Aronsohn & Berman, LLP, which merged with the national law firm Bryan Cave, LLP in 2004.

Mr. Leeds said he first became aware of Ackerman several years ago when the law firm he was with at the time did some legal work for the Institute. At that time, he met several Board members. Last year, Jane Donaldson contacted him and asked if he would join the Board.

“Everyone I met who explained the Ackerman approach struck a chord with me because the approach just seemed right,” Mr. Leeds said.

Serving on the Board also satisfied his interest in working with human services organizations.

“This is an area I wanted to explore,” he explained.

Mr. Leeds said that because he is so new to the Board, he has not yet identified what specific interests he may pursue, but added that he hoped his experience and legal background would be helpful.

“I look forward to sharing my knowledge and to learning new things myself,” he said

Six New Ackerman Graduates Present at the Annual Diversity Lecture

2009-06-18T12:15:00.000-04:00

Six new graduates of the Diversity and Social Work Training Program presented cases and spoke about the ways the program changed their lives at a moving ceremony in the Ackerman Library on May 6, 2009.

The Ackerman Institute initiated the Diversity and Social Work Training Program in 1992 as a result of the vision and generosity of Arthur Maslow, former Chair of the Ackerman Board of Directors and current Trustee Emeritus. The Program was the country’s first initiative designed specifically to address the critical need for a significantly increased number of professionals of color in family therapy services in community-based social service agencies. The Program offers social work students of color the opportunity to intern at Ackerman and enroll in a postgraduate training program with scholarship support. Mr. Maslow and his wife, Carol, attended this year’s presentation.

Laurie Kaplan and Sippio Small, Co-Directors of the Program, spoke briefly to the students and guests before the presentation. Ms. Kaplan noted that many of the students in the Program had never worked with families before or with a co-therapist.

“The group experience is a very big part of this Program,” she explained.

Mr. Small recommended two books to the students, Families of the Slum by Salvatore Minuchin and Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown. Mr. Small observed that “just getting families to come in is a big start” when working in marginalized communities.

The first student who spoke, Brandyn McKinley from Columbia University, said the Program took her “on an unexpected journey.” She said that a large part of her educational experience was her development of a “language of clinical practice” that helped her learn how to ask questions and trust her own judgment. Ms. McKinley said that the case she was presenting resonated strongly with her because one of the objectives she set was to help the wife in the family express her feelings more often. As she worked with the family, Ms. McKinley said she herself began to move past her fear of not being perfect and became more vocal in the sessions.

Cahlel Gumbs from New York University said she had grown both professionally and personally as a result of her enrollment in the Program. She said that when she created a genogram of her own family, it made her question why she knew nothing of her father’s history. The value of the genogram, she said, is that “it highlights patterns in family history and secrets in families.” Ms. Gumbs used the knowledge she gained about her personal life as she worked with a family with an absentee father.

Leighton Whyte, from Hunter College, said that his childhood was characterized by a love of fantasy and a resentment of authority.

“I didn’t like being told what to do,” he explained. “I thought people who told me what to do were trying to steal my voice.”

Mr. Whyte found his clearer understanding of how those issues affected his own life informed his work with the family he treated. Because he didn’t like being told what to do, Mr. Whyte found himself reluctant to intervene with the couple he was treating and relying too heavily on his co-therapist to “save me.” During the course of the Program, Mr. Whyte said he “learned how to assert myself more and also how to take advice from others.”

The fourth student, Silvia Espinal, from New York University, had a special interest in working with immigrant families. Her presentation focused on a family with an absentee father and immigration issues. Ms. Espinal said she identified strongly with the children in the family because she also was an immigrant and had been separated for a period of time from her own mother. Ms. Espinal said that when she first came to the U.S., she had difficulty learning English, but expressed herself through photography. She shared her love of the visual arts with the family she treated and, especially, with one of the children who also was interested in art.

Dolores McCullough from Columbia University came to the Diversity and Social Work Training Program after a career of more than 20 years in human services. She described herself as very task oriented and said her turning point in the Program came when Sippio Small asked her not to prepare a plan for her next session with her family.

“This truly unnerved me,” Ms. McCullough said, “but it helped me learn to focus more on the process. Not planning gave me an opportunity to reflect and I saw that therapy can be a guide rather than a solution.”

The final student to present, Jose Frias from Hunter College, said he had always worked alone and the group experience was totally new to him. The family Mr. Frias worked with was having difficulties with commitment and also dealing with issues of loss. Mr. Frias, who was dealing with the loss of a close friend, himself, said the team helped him develop new approaches to deal with such difficult concerns and to recognize how to use personal issues appropriately.

A number of faculty members from the Hunter College School of Social Work, the Columbia University School of Social Work and New York University’s Silver School of Social Work attended the presentation. They praised the Program for its excellence and the students for their honesty about their own issues and their dedication to the families they treated.

Ari Lev Explores a Family Systems Approach to Gender Variance in Families

2009-06-17T09:55:00.000-04:00

Evan Imber-Black with Ari Lev

After 25 years of work with families affected by gender issues, Arlene (Ari) Istar Lev, LCSW, CASAC, sees some progress, but also believes there is much work still to be done.

“Most gender therapists don’t address family issues,” she explained at the Ackerman Institute for the Family’s one-day conference on May 15th. At the same time, Ms. Lev said, many family therapists are not “fluent in the gender community.”

“My stand is that gender variance is a normal expression of human diversity,” Ms. Lev said. “My goal is to build a bridge between the family therapy and gender communities.”

Ms. Lev noted that gender variance has always existed and gender variance disorder is not about an individual’s gender, but society’s reaction to it. Family acceptance or rejection is the core issues, she explained. Ms. Lev said she believed that transgender emergence is a normative life cycle event, a part of the development process.

There are many terms and many definitions within the transgender umbrella, Ms. Lev explained. The terms include gender variant, gender atypical, gender non-conforming, transgender, transsexual, cross-dressers, intersex, trans men (female to male) and transgender women (male to female), gender benders and gender blenders, bi-gendered, third sex, two spirits and gender queer. Ms. Lev said that in spite of the fact that gender variance crosses all classes, races and ethnic lines and spans all ages (she has worked with clients ranging in age from four to 82), it is poorly understood by most medical and mental health professionals. One factor that may play a role is that gender variance clients who come for therapy often initially seek help for the same broad concerns as any other client, rather than a specific gender-related concern. For example, a couple may seek therapy for a child who is having behavior problems without identifying the child as a cross-dresser or connecting his/her behavior issues to gender identity confusion.

Ms. Lev said that when she began her practice in the 1980s, she had no special training for working with clients with gender issues and also had to work through her own biases. After many years of practice, she said she believed there is no “typical” client with these issues, but a broad range of people with a variety of concerns.

Approximately two percent of all babies born have either ambiguous genitalia or an intersex condition, Mr. Lev said. In most cases, a doctor performs surgery to assign a sex, usually female. Most of these children are unaware of their past.

Ms. Lev said that assigning a sex raised concerns because sex and gender are not the same.

“Sex is about physiology,” Ms. Lev noted. “Gender is about a person’s inner sense of self.”

“I am often asked, why do people want to change their sex?” Ms. Lev said. “My answer is that I have no idea.”

Ms. Lev said there was some evidence that biology, brain chemistry and prenatal hormones played a role is sexual identity but other factors, such as social learning and family pathology, might also be involved. She pointed out that these considerations were the same ones identified in past years as ”causes” of gayness.

“In the end, what does it matter?” she asked.

While pinpointing the causes of gender variance may not necessarily be a priority, Ms. Lev said, understanding the consequences of crossing the boundaries of sex and gender is vitally important for therapists because of the ways in which clients’ lives are affected. Gender variance often leads to social dilemmas, legal quandaries, medical issues, family ostracism, loss of custody of children, unemployment and severe underemployment, lack of civil rights in housing and street violence.

Within the medical profession, the transgender person often is pathologized, Ms. Lev said. She explained that Gender Identity Disorder is included in the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association) and is unlikely to be removed in the near future. However, the DSM is developing a more flexible standard of care. Ms. Lev said it was important for therapists, who often serve as “gatekeepers” to doctors who perform sexual reassignment surgery, to assess clients without pathologizing them.

“This doesn’t mean that anything goes,” Ms. Lev explained. “We do need to assess for psychological difficulties, mental illness, trauma histories and unresolved sexual identity disturbances, persistent gender identity issues and other factors. “

Ms. Lev said that approval for surgical treatment should not depend on being mentally ill, but on being mentally sound enough to make empowered and healthy decisions.

Ms. Lev then outlined a series of phases in the process and the role of the therapist. The first stage is awareness and the therapeutic task is to normalize the process. The second phase is seeking help or reaching out and the therapeutic task is to facilitate. The third phase is disclosure to others and the therapeutic task is to support. The next phase is exploration through language and body modification, followed by integration into the community. The therapist’s role in the last two phases are to help overcome turmoil, facilitate negotiation between clients and families in order to identify what the families can and cannot accept and support clients in finding the balance that enables them to integrate the transgendered person into the normative life of the family as a transgendered person. This balance may vary widely in different families, but some kind of balance is essential.

Working with the families presents numerous challenges as so many issued may be involved, including lack of information, confusion, fear, stigma, financial, legal and medical upheaval, isolation, shame and blame, concern for the impact on children, trust and betrayal and the impact on sexual relationships.

In the afternoon portion of the conference, Ms. Lev made use of a number of video presentations to illustrate her points and Ackerman faculty member Jean Malpas, LMFT, LMHC, served as Discussant.

The May 15th event was the Ackerman Institute’s third one-day conference. Last year’s presenter was Celia Falicov, PhD, who spoke on "New Immigrants in Family Therapy: Transnational Journeys". In 2007, the first conference focused on the work of Peggy Papp and Olga Silverstein. Each year, the one-day conference provides a spotlight for therapists who have demonstrated original thinking and developed groundbreaking work. The conference is overseen by Evan Imber-Black, PhD, Director of Ackerman’s Center for Families and Health.

Ackerman Webinar Program Brings Workshops to a Wider Audience

2009-06-10T16:22:00.000-04:00

More than 50 people participated in the Ackerman Institute’s latest webinar, Getting Past "Never Again": Creating Forgiveness, led by Sue Johnson, EdD, CPsych, on May 13th. The presentation represented Ackerman’s most technologically advanced webinar as Dr. Johnson presented from her base in Canada while Catherine Lewis, Director of Community and International Training, and Climeen Wikoff, Administrative Director, monitored the webinar in New York.

A webinar is an interactive online learning experience conducted via the Internet (to view presenter, Power Point presentations and video edits) and teleconferencing (to hear presenter's audio). It is live and takes place in real time. During the webinar, participants have an opportunity to contribute and participate in Q&A via chat and phone.

“We know there is a large audience of professionals outside of New York who would love to be able to participate in Ackerman’s workshops,” Ms. Lewis said. “The webinar program is Ackerman’s first foray into the world of distance learning, which we believe, has great promise for the future. We are very excited to be able to offer a variety of outstanding programs.”

“This was the first webinar we broadcast with a presenter at a remote location and it worked beautifully,” Ms. Wikoff said. “Our ability to do this means there is almost no limit to the variety of webinars we can present in the future.”

In an email sent to Ackerman following the webinar, one participant said, “I was a little nervous about trying a webinar, but I must say it worked out very well. This is a great way to learn without inconvenience. Please keep them coming.”

A second participant commented that she “got a lot out of it and was thrilled to finally ‘webinar.’”

The Ackerman Institute inaugurated its webinar program in March with a presentation on Work and Family Life: Mastering the Great Juggling Act with Peter Fraenkel, PhD, Director of Ackerman Institute for the Family’s Center for Work and Family.

On April 15th, Dr. Evan Imber-Black, Director of Ackerman’s Center for Families and Health, presented Rituals for our Times: Celebrating, Healing and Changing our Lives and our Relationships.

On April 21st, Dr. Martha Edwards presented Guidance Tools for Positive Parenting.

Most of Ackerman’s webinars are being created for professional audiences. Dr. Edwards’ webinar was open also to parents.

The Ackerman Institute is approved by the APA; NASW, NJ; NASW, NY; and NASW, CT to offer continuing education credits. Webinar registrants are eligible to receive 1.5 CE credits for each 90 minute webinar.

Webinar information is available on the Ackerman website, http://www.ackerman.org/. The Training Department also sends email announcements. If you are not receiving webinar email announcements and would like to receive them, please email your name and organization to: training@ackerman.org.

Annual Theatre Benefit Raises $125,000

2009-06-10T16:17:00.000-04:00

Lois Braverman with Alice Netter

In a year marked by serious economic losses in every sector of society, the 2009 Theatre Benefit raised almost $125,000 in support for the Ackerman Institute. The April 21st event, a performance of the new play Impressionism starring Jeremy Irons, Joan Allen, Marsha Mason and Andre de Shields, included a pre-theatre dinner, held in the Manhattan Ballroom (designed by Ackerman Board member Arnold Syrop) in the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel.

Approximately 220 friends and supporters of the Ackerman Institute purchased play tickets; around 120 people attended the dinner.

“I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart,” Alice Netter, Chair of the Theatre Benefit, told the guests at the dinner. Mrs. Netter said she was especially grateful to the event’s supporters this year because the downturn in the economy has had a negative impact on many fundraising events.

In her remarks, Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, praised Mrs. Netter for her dedication to Ackerman.

“Putting together an evening like this requires enormous commitment and a lot of hard work,” Ms. Braverman said. “Once again, Alice Netter has done an outstanding job.”

Ms. Braverman also thanked the guests for their support.

“The Theatre Benefit is very important to Ackerman because the funds it raises help make it possible for us to continue to serve children and families in need,” Ms. Braverman said. “The mission of the Ackerman Institute is to help couples and families address and overcome the challenges they face in their lives. The Institute helps build stronger families by supporting family members as they work together to mobilize their strengths, resources and resilience in order to solve their problems.
By building stronger families, we build a better world, and your generosity makes that possible.”

Click here to view more Theatre Benefit photos.

Remembering Olga Silverstein

2009-04-03T11:43:00.000-04:00

On February 24, 2009, the field of family therapy lost a giant and the Ackerman Institute lost a great and inspirational colleague when Olga Silverstein died at the age of 87.

Family, friends and colleagues gathered in the Ackerman library on March 25th to share their memories of Ms. Silverstein and to celebrate her life and work.

Evan Imber-Black, who served as moderator of the memorial service, recalled being inspired by Ms. Silverstein at the beginning of her own career.

“I saw Olga on tape and thought I want to be able to do that someday,” Ms. Imber-Black said. Later on, she found herself presenting at a conference with Ms. Silverstein, who provided her with a plan for her talk. “I didn’t use the plan and for 25 years, Olga stayed mad at me,” Ms. Imber-Black commented.

Almost every speaker remembered Olga Silverstein as a woman with an enormous sense of humor and fun, as well as her strong opinions. But above all, she was remembered as an extraordinarily perceptive and gifted therapist.

Ms. Imber-Black concluded her remarks with a memory that she felt really defined Ms. Silverstein. Ms. Imber-Black and Ms. Silverstein, along with several other people, were visiting a garden where they were given honey water to offer to hummingbirds flying around them. While everyone else thrashed their arms back and forth in an attempt to bring the honey water to the birds, Ms. Silverstein sat still, held out the honey water and waited for the hummingbirds to come to her. “That’s who she was,” Ms. Imber-Black said.

Peggy Papp described Ms. Silverstein as her “closest and dearest friend for 30 years. She was like a sister, like the Rock of Gibralter.” Ms. Papp then presented a slide show series of humorous drawings illustrating her adventures through the years with Ms. Silverstein. The drawings clearly demonstrated both Ms. Silverstein’s humor and her special talent as a therapist.

“I was so privileged to get to know her and she so enriched my life,” Ms. Papp said.

Peter Fraenkel provided a video clip of Ms. Silverstein in which she spoke about her view of family therapy. Ms. Silverstein said her approach was intuitive rather than theoretical and that she believed in trying many different things. She also said she believed that “the less intervention the better” because “people need to be in charge of their own lives.”

Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, and several other speakers, all noted that Olga Silverstein was an inspirational teacher who encouraged her students to have greater confidence in themselves.

Ms. Braverman said that when she first began her tenure as president of the Ackerman Institute, Ms. Silverstein, whom she had known for 20 years by then, came to her first meeting with the faculty.

“I always felt Olga was there behind me in my work,” Ms. Braverman said, “and I am so grateful to her for that.”

Echoing many other comments, Gillian Walker noted that, ”I wouldn’t be a family therapist if it wasn’t for Olga. She made us love the field as passionately as she did.”

“We all though of Olga as our mother and grandmother,” Pat Heller commented. “We thought she was magic.”

The Ackerman Institute has established the Olga Silverstein Training Award to honor the memory of Ms. Silverstein. The Award will be presented annually to a gifted student who has completed the live clinical part of Ackerman’s training program and who is entering the first-year externship.

Donors may contribute to the Award fund by mailing a check, payable to the Ackerman Institute for the Family and with the Olga Silverstein Training Award written on the memo line, to Shelley Uva, Director of Development, Ackerman Institute for the Family, 149 East 78th Street, New York, NY 10075 or by visiting Giving Opportunities on the Ackerman Institute website and clicking on the Olga Silverstein Training Award in the box titled Type of Donation.

Richard Johnson Presents Workshop on Family Therapy with One Person

2009-03-24T15:18:00.000-04:00

Presenter Richard Johnson (left) with Alumnae/i Association President,
Vice President Candice Goldberg and Faculty Liaison David Kezur

More than 45 alumnae/i and guests attended Family Therapy with One Person: Coaching Individual Clients Toward Change in Family Relationships, the Alumnae/i Association lecture presented by Richard Johnson, PhD, LCSW, on Friday, March 6th.

Dr. Johnson began his presentation with an excerpt from the Academy-Award winning film, Moonstruck. In the movie’s final scene, a husband faces up to his adultery and reconciles with his wife; two brothers who have feuded for years put aside their differences; and a lonely widow convinced she is "bad luck" accepts a new love.

The message of the clip is that family members often fail one another in important and painful ways, yet they remain family forever and must find their way forward.

Dr. Johnson began by noting that while helping clients deal with difficult family relationships is a major part of most therapy, planful techniques for this work are not widely used. Coaching is an approach grounded in ideas developed by Murray Bowen and elaborated by Monica McGoldrick and Betty Carter. Coaching, or family therapy with one person, offers clients a process for making change in their family relationships even without the participation of other family members.

Coaching is "differentiation in action," Dr. Johnson said, guiding clients through a process of changing their own participation in unsatisfying family relational patterns. For clients who are ready to "let go of the rope," coaching teaches the possibility of dealing with differences, even deep differences, without loosing connection – without resorting to "fight or flight." Instead, coaching teaches clients to observe non-reactively the relationship patterns in their original family, explore their own role in these patterns, and move planfully toward changing their part in the family dance.

The process involves an exploration of family relationship history through use of a genogram, a timeline, and the teaching of basic family systems concepts that organize our understanding of family relational life. In this work, the client moves away from a stance of emotional reactivity into one of family researcher. The perspective gained from this shift supports the client’s work to unhook from intense reactivity to these patterns. The process of change, Dr. Johnson said, is built upon an ownership of one’s emotional reactivity to the old triggers in family relationships, and depends upon client resolve to move beyond reactivity to real choice.

The goal of coaching, Dr. Johnson said, quoting Monica McGoldrick, is "to help clients define themselves proactively in family relationships without emotionally cutting off or giving in." The coaching mantra guiding clients in family interactions is "don’t attack, don’t defend, don’t placate, don’t withdraw."

The kinds of changes clients ultimately attempt (client differentiation moves), Dr. Johnson said, happen on three levels. The simplest and least anxiety provoking move involves altering rote patterns of interaction with family members that have no vitality - ie. doing things differently in ways that signal interest rather than obligation. A second, more challenging, move is the purposeful deepening of authentic, personal, one-to-one relationships with family members in circumstances outside larger family gatherings. The third and boldest move involves withdrawing from back channel family processes and asking at all times for direct, transparent family interaction. Dr. Johnson described experiences, from his private practice, of shifts clients have made that led to more satisfying family connections. He also spoke about clients who are moving more cautiously and struggling with resentments of which they are not ready to let go.

In the course of his talk, Dr. Johnson used film clips to illustrate the dilemmas of differentiation: one from the clinical work of Peggy Papp; the other from the film I Never Sang for My Father. Both clips highlighted the painful cost of high emotional reactivity to the pressures of family life. Two other films were used to illustrate the powerful ways family history shapes family life and constrains relationships: one from the clinical work of Monica McGoldrick; the other from Nobody’s Business, a documentary film by Alan Berliner that focuses on his father’s life .

In the question-and-answer session following the lecture, several audience members spoke of the ways in which coaching might be applicable to their own family situations. One of the themes participants shared in this discussion was the dilemma for family therapists who, in seeking to influence patterns in their own families lives, are often perceived as professional meddlers who are using their knowledge as power.

The next Alumnae/i Association Lecture, the last of the 2008-2009 academic year, is on May 1. Martha Edwards, PhD, will speak on An Integrated Approach to Working with Couples.

Ackerman Alumnae/i Association Presents Case Consultations

2009-02-09T11:22:00.000-05:00

An expectant mother suffering from depression and isolation and a mother and child traumatized by violence were the focus of the two cases presented at the Ackerman Alumnae/i Association’s Case Consultations on Friday, January 23rd. Case Consultations, in which alumni present cases to a panel of Ackerman faculty, is one of the Alumnae/i Association’s most popular annual events. This year’s panel (pictured above from left to right) included Fiona True, LMSW, Dee Watts-Jones, PhD, and Mary Kim Brewster, PhD, who shared their insights and fielded questions from the presenters and an audience of 25 alumnae/i, students and guests.

The next Alumnae/i Association meeting is on Friday, March 6, when Richard Johnson, PhD, LCSW, will present Family Therapy with One Person: Coaching Individual Clients Toward Change in Family Relationships. Admission to Alumnae/i Association events is free for members who have paid their $50 annual dues. Admission is $10 per event for students and externs and $25 per event for other guests. Registration is available online at the Ackerman website.

Dr. Adi Loebl, Ackerman's New Medical Director, Receives Carl Kempner Award

2008-12-17T16:23:00.000-05:00

Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, with Michael Kempner, (center), son of the late Carl Kempner, and Dr. Adi Loebl, recipient of the 2008 Carl Kempner Award

Speaking to a full house in the Ackerman Institute Library, Dr. Adi Loebl, the Institute’s new Medical Director and recipient of this year’s Carl Kempner Award, focused on the care of the elderly as he delivered the annual Carl Kempner Memorial Lecture on December 2nd.

The Kempner Award and Lecture are presented under the auspices of the Center for Families and Health. Dr. Evan Imber-Black, Director of the Center, introduced Dr. Loebl.

In his presentation entitled “An Integrated Psychiatric and Family Systems Approach to Caring for Our Elders,” Dr. Loebl noted the many ways in which medical and psychiatric problems, along with complex family dynamics, are intertwined in the care of older patients. The specific case Dr. Loebl used in his talk was that of a 75-year-old woman, Mrs. Smith, with several serious medical conditions, including hypertension and diabetes, pain and osteoporosis, urinary incontinence and memory loss.

Dr. Loebl said that hypertension and diabetes, both common conditions in the elderly, can have an impact on the delivery of blood throughout the body, including the brain. If a patient is not taking appropriate medication for one or both of these medical conditions, the damage to the blood vessels and consequent lack of adequate blood flow to the brain may cause behavior that appears symptomatic of dementia or even vascular dementia itself. This is best prevented with proper medication.

Just as not taking medication for a physical condition can affect symptoms of mental illness, taking medications also can affect mental health, Dr. Loebl commented. He explained that memory problems can be a side effect of many medications prescribed and commonly in medications used to treat urinary incontinence. Coordination of care is vitally important, especially in the elderly who often present with multiple problems for which they are given many different types of medication by a variety of doctors.

Dr. Loebl’s case study demonstrated clearly the importance of family members in caring for an older person as well as the powerful impact of family interaction. Mrs. Smith is a divorcee with four children, but only one daughter, Jenny, is actively involved in her care. Mrs. Smith also has a home health care worker, Cindy. Although Jenny and Cindy were working to coordinate Mrs. Smith’s care, several critical issues had emerged. Jenny was beginning to feel jealous of her mother’s attachment to Cindy. She also resented the fact that when her less involved brother and sisters came to visit, her mother seemed to appreciate them much more than she appreciated Jenny These family concerns surfaced at a time when Jenny was feeling increased pressure about her work and it became apparent that Jenny was beginning to spiral into depression, herself.

Dr. Loebl used circular questioning to address some of these issues. First, he asked Jenny to think why her mother thought the other children were not as involved as Jenny. Then he asked Mrs. Smith to speak about why she thought Jenny was feeling depressed and overburdened. This type of questioning calls up substantial amounts of relational information that may not be made available otherwise, Dr. Loebl said. It also opens the door to exploring intergenerational transmission of beliefs. In the case of the Smith family, Dr. Loebl explained, Jenny may have been repeating a pattern set by her mother, who lost her own mother as a young woman and stepped in to care for her father and siblings.

Dr.Loebl also said he worked with Cindy and Jenny to ease any tensions between them. Dr. Loebl’s approach was unusual in that he involved the caretaker as fully as the family members. As a result, the caretaker, Cindy, played an instrumental role in helping to mobilize the non-involved family members, which Jenny felt unable to do. This helped ease Jenny’s jealousy and sense of burden. Dr. Loebl’s attention to the home health aide’s position as an important member of the system is an innovation in family therapy with geriatric patients and their families.

Dr. Loebl said that recognizing the complex interactions between an illness and a family helps to clarify treatment planning because goal-setting then can be guided by an awareness of the components of family functioning, the phases of the illness and the family’s beliefs in ways that optimize care. Psychosocial factors, as well as biomedical interventions, become important influences in the healing process. Dr. Loebl said that by integrating psychiatric and family systems approaches we can better help families understand the nature of the illness and understand more fully the role of the family at different stages of illness.

The Carl Kempner Award is named in honor of the late Carl Loeb Kempner, husband of Doris Kempner, an active member of the Ackerman Board for many years. The Kempner family’s commitment to education and social services has been life long and, with the support of the Armand G. Erpf Fund, the Carl Kempner Award continues to enhance knowledge in the development of clinical intervention and in training therapists working with families coping with major health issues. Each year the Center for Families and Health at Ackerman selects an awardee from among our Ackerman trainees, alumni or young faculty members engaged in the most innovative research in the area of families and health. The award recipient delivers the Carl Kempner Memorial Lecture.

Dr. Pedro Noguera Discusses Why People Really Do Need People

2008-11-14T14:50:00.000-05:00

Dr. Pedro Noguera inaugurated the 2008-2009 Ackerman Institute Alumnae/i Workshop series on Thursday, October 23rd with a stimulating and timely talk on “Understanding the Nature of Risk: Building Support for Children and Families in Distress.” Dr. Noguera is a professor in the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University and the Director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education. An urban sociologist, Dr. Noguera’s scholarship and research focuses on the ways in which schools are influenced by social and economic conditions in the urban environment. Dr. Noguera has published more than 150 research articles, monographs and research reports on such topics as urban school reform, conditions that promote student achievement, youth violence, the potential impact of school choice and vouchers on urban public schools, and race and ethnic relations in American society.

Dr. Noguera began by pointing out that unlike many speakers at the workshop series and many people in the audience, he is a sociologist and not a therapist. “We occupy the same kind of social world,” he observed, “but we approach it in different ways.”

Dr. Noguera said he did a lot of his work with schools and to understand schools, it was critically important to see them in a social context. He noted that although the United States has vast resources, it does not do the basics very well. By basics, Dr. Noguera said he meant such endeavors as teaching children from poor communities to read. He said that the schools often are the only safety net available to children.

“We have so many kids suffering from so many ailments,” Dr. Noguera said. “And it’s not just poor kids. In other communities, we have children suffering from substance abuse and eating disorders. It’s a mistake to see risk as only connected to poverty.”

Dr. Noguera noted that the U.S. has the highest teen pregnancy rate of all industrial nations, that the U.S. homicide rate is higher than the death rate of many countries at war, and that more people per capita are incarcerated in the U.S. than in any other country at any time in history.

Dr. Noguera said that the famous sociologist Emile Durkheim – the father of modern sociology – conducted a study of suicide years ago and found that suicide was closely tied to people’s sense of connection to their society. The more connected a person felt, the less likely he or she was to commit suicide. Dr. Noguera said that Emile Durkheim came to see suicide as a symptom of what he called anomie, a term that signifies an erosion, diminution or absence of personal norms, standards or values in an individual. The effect of this normlessness at both the personal or societal level is to introduce alienation, isolation, and desocialization because as norms become less binding for individuals, those individuals lose their sense of right and wrong.

According to Dr. Noguera, anomie grew in the U.S. as society changed from rural to urban and people became less attached to one another. “In other words,” Dr. Noguera said, “people need people.”

Dr. Noguera also cited the observations of Margaret Mead who, when she worked with groups in the 1960s, commented on the fragmentation of generations as a serious societal issue. In his opinion, both Durkehim and Mead were correct, Dr. Noguera commented, because we see in our society a breakdown of both institutions and families.

Social isolation and alienation can lead to mental illness and, in certain circumstances, even death, Dr. Noguera explained. To illustrate his point, he spoke about a heat wave that occurred in Chicago in which a number of elderly people who lived alone actually died because they were so disconnected from their families and communities that there was no one around to see how the extreme heat was harming them. “There was no one to open the window or get them out of their apartments,” he said. However, older people who lived with others or were still involved in a community did well in spite of the dangerous conditions brought about by the heat because another person looked in on them and helped them.

After September 11th, Dr. Noguera said, people experienced an increased sense of community and appreciated it. “There is real social benefit in social community,” Dr. Noguera said. What is needed, he explained, is to teach people emotional intelligence skills. These skills can be taught in schools, but one of the key questions facing society is how to teach them on an even larger scale.

Ackerman Honors 17 Extern Graduates

2008-07-29T12:05:00.000-04:00

Family and friends filled the Ackerman library on July 24th when the Institute hosted its 2008 graduation ceremony. Seventeen externs took part in the celebration commemorating each trainee’s completion of the Ackerman Institute Core Curriculum. Trainees who complete the full Core Curriculum enroll in the Foundations in Family Therapy course and then participate in Live Clinical Supervision and the Clinical Externship in Family Therapy. Upon completion of the Clinical Externship, each trainee receives a certificate at graduation and an invitation to join the Ackerman Alumnae/i Association.

This year’s graduating class was divided into three groups: Rachel Berezin, Andrea Blumenthal, Scott Hirose, Anita Mambo and Bonnie Siegel, supervised by Evan Imber-Black, PhD; Dana Greco, Jodi Harrison, Andrew Koncz, Keren Ludwig, Margaret T. Ngunang and Sarah Robinson, supervised by Miguel Hernandez, LCSW; and Wendy Bond, Kimberly Hope Andron, Karen Murphy, Genevieve Shineman, Orly Toren-Gabay and Jan Weiss, supervised by Fiona True, LMSW.

Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, welcomed the graduates and their guests.

“Completing the Ackerman training program is not an easy task,” Ms. Braverman said. “It requires hard work, dedication and a major commitment of time over a period of years. I am so proud of all of you and I know your families and friends share that pride.”

Ms. Braverman also congratulated the externs’ families and friends.

“At Ackerman, we believe that families are the greatest resource available to individuals coping with the complexities of modern life. We know that individuals’ problems are best solved within the context of family, and we also know that individuals’ achievements also happen within the contexts of families and communities that support those accomplishments,” she explained.

Marcia Sheinberg, Director of Training, characterized the graduates as “an impressive group.”

“You have opened your hearts and your minds to expand your ability to help people,” she said. “You have done so based on a belief in the principles and practices of a relational perspective. While most of the mental health community continues to conceptualize problems as located in individuals whose context may or may not facilitate their well-being, you believe that the essence of one’s health is in the context of connection.”

“As a profession we are facing challenging times,” Ms. Sheinberg continued. “Never has the fork in the road been clearer and the consequences for our field, not to mention the world been greater. As you continue in your careers you will be both ambassadors of the Ackerman approach to human suffering and an advocate for the principles we ascribe, which values all perspective even those which we choose to challenge.”

Each of the three supervisors also congratulated the students. Evan Imber-Black said her externs had shown her they possessed the “authenticity, warmth and empathy” needed to be successful therapists.” She called on the externs to fulfill an ancient Hebrew imperative to “repair the world.”

Miguel Hernandez told his students that their dedication and hard work filled him with the same kind of pride parents feel in their children’s accomplishments.

“You are no longer my students,” he said as he presented each of his externs with flowers. “You are now my colleagues.”

Fiona True said she often uses the metaphor of a pond in family therapy, but that her extern group had really sailed on an ocean. There were storms, she noted, but the externs made their ship seaworthy and took it to an “incredible place.” She congratulated her students for their shared commitment to learn and grow, their dedication to the families they treated and their great intellectual curiosity.

Many of the students then spoke briefly, thanking the faculty and staff at Ackerman, as well as their own families and friends for their love and support.

Ackerman Announces New Board Leadership

2008-07-10T12:28:00.000-04:00

A new slate of officers was elected at the June 10th annual meeting of the Ackerman Institute Board of Directors. Gregory T. Rogers became the new Chair of the Board, transitioning responsibility from Jane Donaldson. Linda Dishy is the new vice chair, and Blair Brewster will serve as the new Secretary. John O’Neill and Al Feliu will continue as Treasurer and Legal Counsel, respectively.

Greg Rogers joined the Ackerman Institute Board in 2006 after participating in Ackerman’s Family Foundations and Live Clinical courses. He is a graduate of Brown University with a degree in Economics and Organizational Behavior, and earned an MBA in International Finance from New York University’s Stern School of Business. He is the Founder and current President of RayLign Advisory, a Greenwich, CT based family consulting firm with a focus on facilitating effective financial decisions in the context of family relationships. In addition, Greg is Founder and President of the RayLign Foundation, as well as advisory member of the Fairfield County Community Foundation, and board member of the Connecticut Council for Economic Education.

“Jane Donaldson, the current Board of Directors and a tremendous Faculty and Staff have put Ackerman on an extremely positive trajectory,” says Mr. Rogers. “I very much look forward to helping further apply Ackerman’s special capabilities toward strengthening families and communities worldwide.”

The Board also welcomed two new members, Diana Benzaquen and John Tyers. Ms. Benzaquen is the Vice President and Director at Brown Harris Stevens, the real estate brokerage firm. Mr. Tyers recently joined Merrill Lynch as Vice President of Broadcort, a leading provider of financial clearing services to investment advisory firms.

Ackerman One-Day Conference Focuses on New Immigrants

2008-07-10T11:52:00.000-04:00

Dr. Evan Imber-Black (left) with Dr. Celia Falicov

Celia Falicov, PhD, an internationally known family therapy author, teacher and clinician presented a comprehensive view of “New Immigrants in Therapy: Transnational Journeys” at the Ackerman Institute’s one-day conference on June 6th. More than 150 professionals and students attended the event, which was held at the Hunter College School of Social Work.

Celia Falicov is Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. Her book, Latino Families in Therapy: A Guide to Multicultural Practice, provides a new model for both trainees and experienced therapists.

Speaking from her experience and using a series of videotapes of sessions with her own clients, Dr. Falicov explained how today’s new technologies, including cell phones, emails, skype and other devices enable new immigrants to maintain close ties with their countries of origin and families there. Even in poorer, underdeveloped countries, cyber cafes support communication.

“What a difference it makes to have that kind of immediacy,” Dr. Falicov noted.

Today, she said, it is possible for immigrants to live “with two hearts instead of a broken heart.”

In addition to technological changes, immigration, itself, has changed considerably from the past. Dr. Falicov said that today’s economic immigrants are very different from the refugees who came to the U.S. decades ago. One big change is that the ratio of women to men immigrants has doubled. In addition, it is common today for immigrants to come to the US without their children. Leaving children behind in the country of origin with grandparents or other caregivers means that there are many new types of separations and reunions that occur.

Dr. Falicov discussed three contexts for working with new immigrants: relational, community and cultural/sociopolitical.

Relational context is the one most familiar to therapists, Dr. Falicov said. She explained that new immigrants most often have a very large relational system at work. The long distance family can act as a resource, providing a collectivist system of care for children. The children involved often develop multiple attachments. In some families in which the caretakers are supportive of the absent parents, this can work well, but in other families, grandparents and other caregivers may be critical of the parents and add to the estrangement children already feel.

Dr. Falicov said that trauma can be part of separation or reunification: during separations, parents, especially solo mothers, often presented with symptoms of depression; during reunifications, it was often the children who were depressed. Mothers who have been apart from their children often need to be re-established in the family hierarchy. This can be a problem in families in which there is ambiguity between the parent and caretaker. When parents and children reunite, Dr. Falicov said, it is important to make meaning out of the separation to repair the bond between them and restore a shared family story.

“This part is very challenging,” Dr. Falicov noted. She recommended that therapists employ a number of techniques, including creating a catching up life narrative, using genograms or family trees to clarify relationships and roles, celebrating family rituals and creating a special ceremony built around a certificate of legitimization that all the family members sign.

The community context includes one of the greatest losses immigrants suffer - the loss of social capital, Dr. Falicov said. She pointed out that while there are many community-based programs that can help immigrants, these programs tended to be geared more toward refugees than today’s economic immigrants (people who come to the U.S. for jobs rather than to escape persecution). Groups do exist for both, Dr. Falicov noted, and can be especially helpful to people with no access to therapy. She recommended that family therapists learn from community-based initiatives.

The final context, the cultural and sociopolitical, focuses on how the community views the immigrant. Dr. Falicov said it was important to determine if the community acted as a source of stress or support.

Following Dr. Falicov’s morning presentation, she was joined by two guest panelists, Robert C. Smith, PhD, an Associate Professor of Sociology specializing in Immigration Studies and Public Affairs at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and Carola Suárez-Orozco, Professor of Applied Psychology at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, where she co-directs Immigration Studies.

Ms. Suárez-Orozco told the audience about a recently completed five-year longitudinal study of 400 children from immigrant families that showed that 85 percent of the children had been separated from their parents from six months to ten years. The percentage varied in different ethnic communities, but “it happens in a lot of kids’ lives,” she said. Ms. Suárez-Orozco said the study did not reveal much anger or anxiety in the children, but did find a significant amount of depression.

“The way the separation was handled made quite a difference,” she observed.

In many cases, she explained, the parents did not talk about why they were leaving to the children. Instead, they simply left. This type of separation most often was traumatic and had a bad effect on the children. In families in which parents created a separation narrative to explain why they were leaving, there was substantially less depression.

One other factor that played a key role was the way in which the caregiver handled the narrative, Ms. Suárez-Orozco continued. Caregivers who supported and reinforced the separation narrative initiated by the parents helped decrease depression in the children. Ms. Suárez-Orozko also said that the issue of immigration and separation was not unique to the United States, but an international issue.

Dr. Smith commented that one of the phenomena he observed in immigrant parents was a kid of suspension of life. Often the separation was so lengthy that the children grew up before reunification of the family took place. As a result, Dr. Smith said, parents and children who reunite often feel that they are strangers to each other. In some families, parents are viewed as “fairy godmother” figures because they only visit once in a while and usually bring gifts. The children may expect this type of relationship even after the family is reunited.

Lengthy separations also alter the roles of the family members. Children who have been raised by grandparents or other caregivers may feel they don’t have to obey parents they hardly know.

“The most difficult reunifications seem to happen among teen immigrants,” Dr. Smith said. He added that the alienation these adolescents feel sometimes leads them to join gangs when they are reunified with parents in this country.

Dr. Smith agreed with Ms. Suárez-Orozco that the way parents handle their leaving has a big impact on the children’s emotional and mental health. He said he saw a difference in gender scripts. Men are more likely to just leave with no explanation, he explained, but the children get much angrier at mothers who leave with or without explanation because there is a greater expectation that mothers will not leave their children.

“The technology is very helpful,” Dr. Smith concluded, “but there is a tremendous amount of missed opportunities.”

The conference included case consultations at lunchtime with Ackerman faculty members Mary Kim Brewster, PhD, Jean Malpas, MSW, and Laurie Kaplan, LCSW.

The conference concluded with a discussion of the advantages and pitfalls of cultural retention and long distance family and community connections in treatment decisions and advice about how to integrate all the parts of the model in treatment planning, goals, and implementation.
The one-day conference was chaired by Evan Imber-Black, PhD. The conference committee included Mary Kim Brewster, Elana Katz, LCSW, Lisa Lavelle, LCSW, Jean Malpas and Fiona True, LCSW. The conference was co-sponsored by the Hunter College School of Social Wo

Ackerman Honors Diversity Program Graduates

2008-07-10T11:30:00.000-04:00

The Ackerman Institute recognized six students who completed the Diversity and Social Work Training Program this year at a presentation in the Library held on May 7th.

The six students are Dorimar Morales, Eddie Danner and Erika Sosa, from the Hunter College School of Social Work, and Adrianne Fiala, Jacqueline Juarez and Daniela Nunez from the NYU School of Social Work.

Laurie Kaplan, Co-Director of the Program, noted that 2008 marked the 16th year of the Diversity and Social Work Training Program, which was initiated to bring more students of color into the field. The focus of the Program is on personal as well as professional development, and the group process incorporated into the Program often mirrors what students see when they work with families, she remarked

“This kind of program is very important in terms of what it brings to society,” Sippio Small, Co-Director of the Program, said. Mr. Small added that “the important thing in a democracy is to question” and that the Ackerman Institute had always encouraged its trainees to ask many questions.

The Ackerman Institute initiated the Diversity and Social Work Training Program in 1992 as a result of the vision and generosity of Arthur Maslow, former Chair of the Ackerman Board of directors and current Trustee Emeritus. The Program was the country’s first initiative designed specifically to address the critical need for a significantly increased number of professionals of color in family therapy services in community-based social service agencies. Currently, only four percent of family therapists across the nation are people of color although it is expected that the number of minority families in the U.S. will reach 48 percent of the population by 2050. the Program offers social work students of color the opportunity to intern at Ackerman and enroll in a postgraduate training program with scholarship support.

Each student spoke briefly about his/her experience at Ackerman and presented a case. Eddie Danner’s life story demonstrated that at one time, he might have been a client at Ackerman. He was raised by a single mother, was later separated from her, and as a teenager, was drawn to street life in Harlem. Completing the Ackerman program represents a “personal triumph” he said, and he expressed his gratitude to his colleagues and the staff. “We support one another,” he said.

Jacqueline Juarez commented on how a therapist can relate strongly to a family in treatment because often the family’s issues are similar to those in the therapist’s own life. She said she had a definite connection to the family she saw because fighting was a key issue, and as a child she had refereed family fights.

Dorimar Morales said she thought the term “person of color” was a phrase coined by the dominant culture to lump all kinds of people together. Ms. Morales said she identifies in a variety of ways – as a woman, a Latina, a black and as a person from a Puerto Rican culture that is extremely diverse. In therapy sessions, she added, she identified most strongly as an immigrant although Puerto Ricans in the U.S. are not considered immigrants. As a result of her own anxiety about communicating with clients in English, Ms. Morales helped create a document called Diversity Conversation Guidelines that poses a series of questions for therapists to ask clients. The Guidelines help open communications and decrease anxiety.

Erika Sosa told the audience that her work at Ackerman intersected with her own life as her experience in losing her father was amplified by her work with a family who also experienced a loss. She said she and her co-therapist had not always agreed about how to treat their family, but that their different points of view made them a stronger team and allowed them to grow as individuals.

Adrienne Fiala observed that “beliefs influence behavior” and that she had learned how important it was not to let her beliefs influence the family she treated. She also noted that it was important to remember that different people take different meanings from the same action.

The last student to present, Daniela Nunez, said that the parent/child relationship she saw in her client related to the relationship between her and her co-therapist. The experience helped her learn to open up eventually and has altered hew way of thinking and feeling.

Many audience members expressed great appreciation for the students’ honesty in discussing their lives and their work at Ackerman.

“This is such crucial stuff,” NYU professor Allison Aldridge commented, “and so incredibly moving.”

Ackerman Theatre Benefit Sells Out

2008-04-30T09:52:00.000-04:00

Ackerman Chair Jane Donaldson (left) with Alice Netter, Chair of the Theatre Benefit

The 2008 Theatre Benefit, a preview performance of The Country Girl, starring Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher, raised more than $160,000 in support for the Ackerman Institute. The event, held on April 22, also included a pre-theatre dinner, held in the Manhattan Ballroom (designed by Ackerman Board member Arnold Syrop) in the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel.

Three hundred friends and supporters of the Ackerman Institute purchased play tickets; 200 attended the dinner.

“This is a very special evening,“ Alice Netter, Chair of the Theatre Benefit, told the guests at the dinner, “because we are completely sold out.”

One new feature at this year’s dinner was a silent auction offering a unique item – a reservation for six at Rao’s, the famous East Harlem Italian restaurant. Rao’s is renowned for its food, celebrity clientele and exclusiveness. It is not uncommon to wait one year for a reservation at one of the tiny restaurant’s ten tables. Board member Carole Mallement secured the auction prize, which was won by Board member Alan Quasha. Ms. Netter and Lois Braverman both acknowledged Ms. Mallement’s contribution.

In her remarks, Ms. Braverman also cited Ms. Netter for her dedication.

“Putting together an evening like this requires enormous commitment and a lot of hard work, “ Ms. Braverman said. “I want to thank Alice Netter, who once again this year has done an amazing job.” Ms. Braverman went on to thank another Board member, Jeannie Ackerman Curhan, who donated gourmet chocolates for the dinner.

Finally, Ms. Braverman reminded the guests of the real meaning of the evening.

“The Theatre Benefit is not only a wonderful social event and a great evening at the theatre, but also provides important support for the Ackerman Institute,” she commented. “For those of you who don’t know us or are new to Ackerman, the Institute is dedicated to providing innovative clinical family therapy services, state-of-the-art training programs for family therapists and cutting-edge research initiatives around critical family issues. Your generosity helps make all of this possible.”

Gil Tunnell Presents Applying AEDP to Couple Treatment

2008-03-26T12:12:00.000-04:00

Alumni and guests packed the Ackerman Institute library on Friday, March 7 for a presentation on Applying Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) to Couple Treatment by Gil Tunnell, PhD. Dr. Tunnell is pictured above (bottom left) sitting next to Candice Goldberg, Vice President of the Alumni Association, with Brenda Shrobe, President of the Alumni Association, and David Kezur, Faculty Liaison, standing behind. The lecture was the final event in this year’s Alumni Association Lecture Series.

Dr. Tunnell began his talk by contrasting the differences between Salvador Minuchin’s structural model for couple therapy and AEDP. Dr. Tunnell explained that in the AEDP model, the therapist’s goal is to get the couple in treatment to stop behaving defensively so they can experience core emotions, such as sadness or joy. When people are unable to express their feelings, Dr. Tunnell continued, symptoms appear, but when people stop being defensive and express their emotions, they then enter a core state. In order to get patients to let go of their defenses and anxiety, Dr. Tunnell said, the therapist must have an affirmative relationship with the couple so they feel safe enough to talk about how they really feel.

The more traditional model for couple therapy, the structural model, uses a completely different approach. The structural model includes three steps: (1) joining (of the therapist and couple); (2) enactment (by the couple); and (3) unbalancing (during which the therapist uses confrontation to strip away the couple‘s defenses).

Dr. Tunnell said that after he studied the structural model with Salvador Minuchin, he came to believe that “that kind of confrontation is shaming to couples.” The structural model raises anxiety, he continued but “AEDP does just the opposite. It lowers anxiety.”

Dr. Tunnell used the fable of the wind and the sun to illustrate his point. In that fable, the question is how do you get a man walking down a road to take off his coat. The structural model (the wind) says you try and blow the coat off; the AEDP model (the sun) says you warm the man until he removes the coat himself. By lowering anxiety levels, AEDP helps people connect with their feelings and, in turn, one another.

Dr. Tunnell noted that AEDP, which he studied with Diana Fosha, is grounded in attachment theory. From the first session, the therapist is affirmative, creating a healthy attachment and a safe bond with the couple. In order to achieve this objective, the therapist must pay attention to non-verbal signs and allow emotion to emerge in the room. The therapist can encourage the couple to be more empathetic by asking each partner if he/she noticed the other person’s non-verbal reactions. The goal here is for one person to facilitate and encourage, rather than repress and discourage, the full expression of emotion by the partner, a process AEDP calls “dyadic regulation of affect.”

The final phase of AEDP involves metaprocessing the experience. Metaprocessing is a way for partners in the relationship to think about how they feel when their partners respond to them in a particular way. For example, if one person begins to cry when certain aspects of the relationship are discussed, the therapist, during metaprocessing, asks the other person, “What was it like for you to have your partner respond to you by crying?” Metaprocessing often deepens the experience and helps the partners in the relationship connect more fully.

Dr. Tunnell showed several videotapes of sessions to illustrate his points. The last video he showed was not actually an AEDP model, but incorporated many AEDP concepts. The video focused on a couple coping with the approaching death of one partner. In the course of the couple’s therapy, the dying partner made a number of connections between the current situation and his partner’s past, and this association seemed to release a significant amount of anxiety.

The audience was clearly deeply moved by the tape and the process they witnessed. Several audience members expressed admiration for the dying partner’s ability to put aside his own needs and focus so strongly on his partner’s emotional state. One woman commented that the dialogue between the two men was “like watching a play.”

Another alumnus connected the tape and lecture to his overall feelings about the Ackerman Institute.

“I always come back to Ackerman because I always believe there’s something more,” he said, “and this was something more.”

Ackerman Hosts Third Annual Case Consultations

2008-03-26T11:59:00.001-04:00

More than 40 alumni and guests squeezed into a packed library on Friday, January 25 when the Ackerman Institute Alumni Association hosted the Third Annual Case Conference. The case conference panel consisted of Jorge Colapinto, LPsych, Lisa Lavelle, LCSW, and Fiona True, LMSW, (pictured from left to right in the photo above).

The Case Consultation panel is one of the most popular events on the Alumni Association calendar. Each year, alumni are invited to submit cases to be discussed by a panel of faculty members. The purpose of the case consultation is to offer the individual therapist a range of different ideas about how to approach particular situations. Alumni and guests in the audience also contribute ideas and opinions.

"That was really fascinating," one audience member said as the evening came to a close. Another audience member noted, "I'm going to be thinking about these cases all weekend."

Frank Taira Donates Painting to Ackerman Institute

2007-12-18T14:48:00.000-05:00

Frank Taira, who began his career as an artist almost 70 years ago, has donated an oil painting, Landscape, to the Ackerman Institute for the Family. Mr. Taira (above), who lives in an assisted living facility on the upper East Side, came to the Institute on December 14 to view his work, which hangs in the Ackerman Institute waiting room.

Frank Taira was born in San Francisco in 1913. He studied art at the California School of Fine Arts from 1935 to 1938 and by the following year, he was showing his work at a juried show at the San Francisco Museum of Art and the Oakland Art Gallery. He was invited to prepare a one-man show at the Museum of Art (now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) when his promising career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. Although Mr. Taira was born in the United States, he, along with thousands of other Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast, was interned in a camp for most of World War II. Mr. Taira was sent to Topaz, Utah from 1942 to 1944.

Upon his release, Mr. Taira moved to New York, where he continued his career as an artist. He studied at Columbia University, the Art Students League and the New School for Social Research. Through the years, his paintings have been exhibited at the Hudson Guild Gallery, the National Arts Club, the National Academy of Design, the Salmagundi Club and at the First International Biennale in 1998 and the Florence (Italy) Biennale Internazionale Bell'Arte Contemporanea in 2001.

Mr. Taira has won several Grand Prizes for jewelry design at the Washington Square Outdoor Exhibition, has had several one-man shows at galleries, and is cited in a number of art books. His work appears in the collection of the Japanese-American National Museum in Los Angeles.

In 1950, Mr. Taira contracted tuberculosis and spent time in a hospital isolation ward where he drew a series of pen-and-ink sketches. This work is scheduled to be featured at a show at the Healthcare Chaplaincy in New York in April 2008.

Mr. Taira has worked in a variety of mediums and in many styles. His work, in many ways, reflects both the experiences of his own long life and those of the world of art in the 20th century. When asked about the artists he most admires, however, he said he especially loved old masters, particularly Rembrandt.

Celebrating Money and Meaning by Judith Stern Peck

2007-12-18T14:15:00.000-05:00

More than 100 friends, family members, colleagues and other guests celebrated the publication of faculty member Judith Stern Peck's new book, Money and Meaning (John Wiley & Sons) at a book-signing party at the Ackerman Institute on December 12. Ms. Peck is pictured above (right)with the Ackerman Institute's newest Board member, Diana Benzaquen.

"This book is a great accomplishment on Judy's part," Lois Braverman, President of the Ackerman Institute, told the guests. "It also represents a major landmark for the Money and Life Project, which Judy initiated at Ackerman eight years ago and continues to direct."

The subtitle of Money and Meaning is New Ways to Have Conversations with Clients about Money, A Guide for Therapists, Coaches, and Other Professionals. Ms. Peck explained that while money issues often play a key role in family life, money is a subject that makes many therapists feel uncomfortable. The purpose of the Money and Life Project, and the book, which grew out of the Project, is to provide therapists and other professionals with the tools they need to encourage clients to think and talk about the ways in which their values are reflected in their financial decisions and the ways in which they make those decisions.

Alumnae/i Lecture - Nancy J. Napier - November 16, 2007

2007-12-05T15:53:00.000-05:00

"Somatic Experiencing (SE) is an "amazingly powerful and effective" therapeutic approach, according to Nancy J. Napier, LMFT, the guest speaker at the second Alumnae/i Lecture in the 2007-2008 series. In her talk, entitled "An Introduction to Somatic Experiencing: Including the Body in Psychotherapy," Ms. Napier, pictured above (right) with Brenda Shrobe, President of the Alumnae/i Association, commented that SE can be applied to anyone at any time who has to deal with "too much too soon."

Ms. Napier said that SE was developed by therapist Peter Levine who, in the course of studying animal behavior, questioned why animals return to their natural rhythm after traumatic experinces while human beings often do not. The answer, Ms. Napier explained, is that human beings do not allow their bodies to move through trauma.

SE, Ms. Napier said, is a very compassionate model that recognizes that "our bodies are wired to heal." In fact, she noted, "our bodies have a blueprint for health."

In SE, Ms. Napier said, therapists work with people to "slow things down to the pace of the body. The resource for SE always is time."

Ms. Napier said it also was important to remember that "trauma is in the nervous sytem, not the event." That concept explains why one person is traumatized and another not traumatized by the same event.

When people are traumatized, Ms. Napier said, they are in overload with "mobilized energy with no place to go." They are stuck in the "fight/flight" mode. The other extreme of traumatized behavior is shutdown. Both extremes bring with them an array of symptoms. Ms. Napier said these extremes exist at the top and bottom of a curve, and the goal of SE is to keep people somewhere within the curve, "within their range of resilience."

As part of the presentation, Ms. Napier showed two videos of people being treated with SE. the first video focused on a baby who had experienced a traumatic birth and, as a result, never cried. The second video showed how SE helped a middle-aged man who had spent his childhood in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. In both cases, SE achieved a positive result.

The key is to "let the process unfold in an informed way," Ms. Napier said. "The healing is always in the body."

Nancy J. Napier is in private practice in New York City. She is the author of Recreating Your Self; Getting Through the Day; Sacred Practices for Conscious Living; and, co-author of Meditations & Rituals for Conscious Living. Ms. Napier also is a former Board member of the New York Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, past Board and Faculty member of the New York Milton H. Erickson Society for Psychotherapy and Hypnosis, and past president of the New York Society for the Study of Disocciation.

Kempner Lecture - Michael Davidovits - November 13, 2007

2007-12-05T11:28:00.000-05:00

Michael Davidovits, PhD, (pictured above with Doris Kempner, left, and Lois Braverman, right) delivered the Seventh Annual Carl Kempner Memorial Lecture in support of the Center for Families and Health on Tuesday, November 13th. The topic of the lecture was "Of Hope and Loss: Immigration, Adolescent Depression and the Family."

The Carl Kempner Award was named in memory of Carl Loeb Kempner, husband of Doris Kempner, who has been an active Ackerman Board member for many years. The Kempners’ commitment to education and social services has been lifelong. With the support of the Armand G. Erpf Fund, the Carl Kempner Prize continues to enhance knowledge in the development of clinical interventions and in the training of therapists who work with families coping with major health issues. Each year the award is given to an Ackerman Institute for the Family student or faculty member engaged in the most innovative research in the area of families and health.

Alumnae/i Lecture - Nancy Boyd-Franklin - October 12, 2007

2007-12-05T10:46:00.000-05:00

Dr. Nancy Boyd-Franklin, Professor in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, delivered the first Alumnae/i Lecture of the 2007/2008 season on October 12, 2007. Her topic was "Special Issues in the Treatment of African-American Families."

Using a combination of lecture, clinical case examples and videotapes, Dr. Boyd-Franklin shared insights with the audience about how to work effectively with African-American clients and families. Dr. Boyd-Franklin pointed out that there is great diversity within the African-American community, and offered advice to the participants about how to make use of cultural strengths, including the extended family network, religion and spirituality, and survival skills, in their work. The workshop also addressed the issue of racism, particularly in terms of its impact on family life, child rearing and gender issues. In addition, Dr. Boyd-Franklin spoke about the “invisibility” of African-American men and the fears of many black families for their male children.

Nancy Boyd-Franklin is an internationally recognized lecturer and the author of five books and numerous articles on ethnicity and family therapy, the treatment of African-American families, extended family issues, spirituality and religion, home-based family therapy, group therapy for black women, HIV and AIDS, parent and family support groups, community empowerment and the multisystems model. Currently she is the co-director, with Dr. Brenna Bry, of the Rutgers/Somerset Counseling Program, a school and community-based program that trains doctoral students to provide individual therapy, home-based family therapy, and school-based violence prevention groups for at-risk adolescents.

Tribute to Families Gala - October 24, 2007

2007-12-05T10:34:00.000-05:00

The Tribute to Families Gala, held on Wednesday, October 24 at the Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers, raised more than $700,000 in support for the Ackerman Institute for the Family. More than 300 guests attended the event, which honored Arthur Maslow and Alan Quasha. Jane and William Donaldson served as Honorary Chairs; Nina and Pieter Taselaar and Gregory and Dana Rogers were the Co-Chairs and Cheryl and Philip Milstein were the Vice Chairs.

The funds raised by the Gala are unrestricted support for the Ackerman Institute. Unrestricted support is vitally important because it covers operating expenses for the Institute and also can be applied to any specific area in need.

“The Ackerman Institute is very privileged to have so many generous and caring friends,” Lois Braverman, President and CEO, told the guests at the Gala. “The work we do at Ackerman is vitally important and we absolutely could not do it without you.”

The evening began with cocktails at 6 p.m., followed by dinner and the awards ceremony. One early highlight was the first screening of a new video about the Ackerman Institute, It All Starts Here, created for the occasion. It All Starts Here is the new slogan of the Ackerman Institute. The video includes comments about Ackerman’s programs and services by members of the Board of Directors, faculty and students.

Jane Donaldson, Chair of the Ackerman Board of Directors, presented the awards to Arthur Maslow and Alan Quasha. Mr. Maslow, who graduated from the Ackerman Institute’s training program in 1975, later served as Chair of the Board of Directors, and currently is a Trustee Emeritus, received the Ackerman Distinguished Service Award. Mr. Quasha, President of Quadrant Management, Inc. and current member of the Ackerman Board of Directors, received the Ackerman Corporate Partner Award.

Speaking about Mr. Maslow, Ms. Donaldson recalled his role in initiating the Family School Collaboration with Howard Weiss and his vision and generosity in the creation of the Diversity and Social Work Program.

“Arthur didn’t do these things because they were fashionable or for his own aggrandizement,” she said. “He did them because he is a true humanist with a deep and abiding belief in the power of people and the value of families.”

In tribute to Mr. Maslow’s more than 30 year association with the Ackerman Institute, Ms. Donaldson said she was “thrilled to announce that your contributions and achievements will be honored for years to come because in the future, the Distinguished Service Award will be known as the Arthur Maslow Service Award.”

Ms. Donaldson also praised Mr. Quasha for his involvement with the Ackerman Institute.

“Alan has given of himself very generously,” she commented, “and he brings an important and interesting perspective to the work of the Ackerman Institute.”

Ms. Donaldson noted that Mr. Quasha’s perspective on the importanceof balancing work and family, the topic of the Gala’s panel discussion, came from his own experience as a very successful business leader, a participant on many non-profit Boards, and a husband and father of four children.

Both award recipients received enlarged, framed family photographs selected by their families.

After dinner, Mr. Quasha joined William Donaldson, Honorary Chair of the Gala and former Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Marjorie Magner, founding member and managing partner of Brysam Global Partners, for the panel discussion on The Demands of Work & Family: A Balancing Act. The discussion, which was projected onto two large screens, was moderated by television host Charlie Rose.

The conversation was lively as Mr. Rose, who confessed that ”I know nothing” since he is not married and has no children, asked the participants to define such terms as “quality time” and explain how they maintained balance in their own lives. Ms. Magner’s comments seemed to resonate most strongly with the women in the audience when she explained that as the working mother of a young child, she had always felt guilty whether at home or at work.

In addition to Board members, faculty, and friends, a group of ten Israeli therapists, who are visiting Ackerman for two weeks of seminars and workshops, also attended the Gala. The Israeli group, from the Shinui Institute, represent the Ackerman Institute’s newest international partnership. The group’s visit and attendance at the Gala were made possible by the generous support of Board member Alice Netter.

Sweet Appreciation IV - Rusty Magee Clinic Benefit - October 13, 2007

2007-12-05T10:15:00.000-05:00

Soprano Frances Ginsberg was the featured performer at Sweet Appreciation IV, a benefit held on October 14 in support of the Rusty Magee Clinic for Families and Health. Ms. Ginsberg, who is based in Milan, Italy, and performs all across Europe, was accompanied by Maestro Marco Munari of La Scala, Maestro Joshua Greene of the Metropolitan Opera and pianist Allison Leyton-Brown in an eclectic program that included music by Verdi, Puccini, Ravel, Rodgers and Hammerstein and Rusty Magee.

Frances Ginsberg’s emotionally generous and sensitive singing has touched the hearts of audiences worldwide since her New York City Opera debut in 1986, when Beverly Sills named her Debut Artist of the Year. The concert marked the first time ever that Maestros Munari and Greene have appeared on stage together, and also was Maestro Munari’s American debut.

The benefit was held at Holy Apostles Church on Ninth Avenue and 28th Street, with an after show party with Mary Testa, Nancy Giles, Magee Hickey and the friends of Rusty Magee at Porters Restaurant on Seventh Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets.

“I am so grateful to Frances Ginsburg, Maestros Munari and Greene and Allison Leyton-Brown for donating their time and talents to the Rusty Magee Clinic,” Evan Imber-Black, director of the Ackerman Institute’s Center for Families and Health, said. “The program was just beautiful and such a fitting tribute to Rusty Magee.”

The Rusty Magee Clinic for Families and Health was named in October 2006 to honor the memory of Rusty Magee, composer, lyricist, and comedian for film and television. The Clinic, which provides crucial services to couples and families facing chronic or life-shortening medical illness, works to help others mirror the courage, good humor, and generosity of spirit Rusty Magee demonstrated during his long battle with cancer. During the last six months of his life, no matter how ill he felt, Rusty Magee came to the Ackerman Institute for the Family every week with his wife, Alison Frasier, also a performer, to give and receive the gift of relationship. The Rusty Magee Clinic for Families and Health is a true testament to the belief that while death may end a life, it never ends a relationship.

In addition to offering therapy services, the Rusty Magee Clinic trains allied health professionals. It is the only clinic of its kind in the tri-state area, and is recognized by health care professionals as the place to refer patients and families for needed emotional support, relationship solutions and the recovery of resilience in the face of serious illness and loss.

“One of the things we try to do at the Rusty Magee Clinic is help families continue with their lives,” Lisa Lavelle, Assistant Director of the Center for Families and Health, explained. “When a family member has a serious illness, the family has to cope with it, but it doesn’t have to dominate everything they do. They can still have a more resilient life.