Lynn Hoffman (
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, September 10, 1924; December 21, 2017)
was an American
social work
Social work is an academic discipline and practice-based profession concerned with meeting the basic needs of individuals, families, groups, communities, and society as a whole to enhance their individual and collective well-being. Social work ...
er,
family therapist
Family therapy (also referred to as family counseling, family systems therapy, marriage and family therapy, couple and family therapy) is a branch of psychology and clinical social work that works with families and couples in intimate relationsh ...
, author and historian of family therapy. Her mother,
Ruth Reeves
Ruth Marie Reeves (1892–1966) was an American painter, Art Deco textile designer and expert on Indian handicrafts.
Early life and education
Ruth Marie Reeves was born in Redlands, California, on July 14, 1892. She attended the Pratt Institute ...
was a painter,
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
textile designer and an originator of the
American Index of Design. She graduated
summa cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...
in
English literature
English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...
in 1946 from
Radcliffe College
Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...
, and after editing psychology works, she started
MSW studies in 1969 and specialized in family therapy.
Originally a
systems
A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and express ...
-
strategic
Strategy (from Greek στρατηγία ''stratēgia'', "art of troop leader; office of general, command, generalship") is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the "art ...
theorist and therapist, she became a proponent of post-systems/
post-modern
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
/collaborative approaches. She was an advisory editor of ''
Family Process
''Family Process'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on family system issues, including policy and applied practice. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Family Process Institute. Since 2007, the journa ...
'' and ''
Journal of Marital & Family Therapy
The ''Journal of Marital and Family Therapy'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. The journal was established in 1975. The current edito ...
''. Until her retirement in 2000, she had for many years been on the faculty of the
Ackerman Institute and the
Smith College School of Social Work. She spent her last years as a lecturer at
Saint Joseph College in
West Hartford
West Hartford is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States, west of downtown Hartford. The population was 64,083 at the 2020 census.
The town's popular downtown area is colloquially known as "West Hartford Center," or simply "The C ...
,
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...
.
Bibliography
*
Haley, J. & Hoffman, L. (1967; 1994)
''Techniques of family therapy.''New York: Basic Books. (1994 printing – Northvale, NJ: Aronson.)
*Hoffman, L. (1981). ''Foundations of Family Therapy: A Conceptual Framework for Systems Change.'' New York: Basic Books.
*
*
*
*Hoffman, L. (1993)
''Exchanging Voices: A Collaborative Approach to Family Therapy.''London: Karnac Books.
*
*Hoffman, L. (2002). ''Family Therapy: An Intimate History.'' New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
*Hoffman, L. (2007). The art of "withness": A new bright edge. In H. Anderson & D. Gehart (Eds.), ''Collaborative therapy: Relationships and conversations that make a difference'' (pp. 63–79). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Group.
See also
*
Harlene Anderson
Harlene Anderson (born 1942) is an American psychologist and a cofounder of the Postmodern Collaborative Approach to therapy. In the 1980s, Anderson and her colleague Harold A. Goolishian pioneered a new technique that is used to relate to patients ...
*
Jay Haley
Jay Douglas Haley (July 19, 1923 – February 13, 2007) was one of the founding figures of brief and family therapy in general and of the strategic model of psychotherapy, and he was one of the more accomplished teachers, clinical supervisors, and ...
Notes
External links
Lynn Hoffman
from ''Daily Hampshire Gazette
The ''Daily Hampshire Gazette'' is a six-day morning daily newspaper based in Northampton, Massachusetts, United States, and covering all of Hampshire County, southern towns of Franklin County, and Holyoke. The newspaper prints Monday through S ...
''
article
from ''Amherst Bulletin
The ''Daily Hampshire Gazette'' is a six-day morning daily newspaper based in Northampton, Massachusetts, United States, and covering all of Hampshire County, southern towns of Franklin County, and Holyoke. The newspaper prints Monday through ...
''
Social Construction Therapies Network
Family therapists
American psychotherapists
1924 births
2017 deaths
American expatriates in France
Radcliffe College alumni
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