Psychotherapy". While not yet speaking of family therapy as such,
Ackerman wrote:

The two-person psychoanalytic relationship provides a unique
experience in which the earlier patterns of child-parent relations
are relived and their destructive elements removed. Group Psy-
chotherapy, involving three or more persons, however, has its
dynamic base in the fact that the child's character is influenced,
not only by the mother, but all the interacting relationships
within the family group, especially the relationship between the
parents. These multiple interpersonal patterns, each affecting the
other, also contribute to the distortion of personality.

In psychodrama, these interpersonal, interactional patterns are
explored in action, not merely analysed, and redirected in action.
To indicate how much resistance Ackerman also met when he
ventured into the group psychotherapy arena, he wrote in the
above-named article:

At a luncheon meeting of the American Orthopsychiatric Asso-
ciation, at which the plan for the American Group Therapy
Association was launched, I timidly suggested that a study of the
process of Group Psychotherapy might provide a natural setting
for the acquisition of sorely needed knowledge in a new science,
social psychopathology. My remark was not then received with
favor, but I still cling to that same prejudice. I believe careful
study of the process of group psychotherapy may yet give sub-
stance to the now-emerging science of social psychopathology.

It is easy to see how Ackerman was drawn to Moreno's ideas and
how he began to take steps that culminated, some years later, in the
organization of the Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy in New
York City.

Since then, group psychotherapy and psychodrama have both
become accepted procedures in many areas of interpersonal and
inter- and intragroup conflict, with family therapy a firmly estab-
lished branch. Dr Chris Farmer is here, and in the sequel to this
book, presenting a very thorough overview of the many ways he
has been able to use psychodrama in a number of settings.

It strikes me that perhaps the term "psychotherapy" itself
should be revised. Are we certain that we heal psyches? Moreno

-xii-