Peggy Penn, Ph.D., MSW

The Ackerman Institute of Family Therapy

Peggy Penn  was a Supervising Faculty Member of the Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy. She was researching the effects of combining writing with therapeutic conversations.

From 1986 to 1992, Ms. Penn was Ackerman’s Director of Clinical Training. In addition to writing and conversation in therapy, her research and study groups focused on chronic illness, gender issues in family therapy, and violence in the family. Her workshops on these and other issues had been enthusiastically received throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Ms. Penn was the author of extensive publications. Among them are: “Creating a Participant Text: Multiple Voices, Narrative Multiplicity and Writing,” (with Marilyn Frankfurt, Family Process, 1994), and “Letter Writing in Family Systems” (The Family Therapy Networker, 1991) “Rape Flashbacks” (Family Process, 1985) and “Chronic Illness: Writing Voices and Trauma” (Family Process, 2001) .

In 1988, she was honored by the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy for her distinguished contribution to the field of family therapy. Among her other affiliations, Ms. Penn was a Board Member of the Poetry Society of America, and a founding member of the Board, New Yorkers for Children.