Lynn Hoffman

Who is Lynn Hoffman?

Lynn Hoffman, ACSW, is a US social worker, family therapist, author and historian of family therapy. Her mother, Ruth Reeves was a painter and Art Deco textile designer. She graduated summa cum laude in English Literature in 1946 from Radcliffe, and after editing psychiatric works, she started MSW studies in 1969 and specialized in family therapy.

Originally a systems-strategic theorist and therapist, she has since become a proponent of post-systems/post-modern/collaborative approaches. She has been an editor of Family Process and Journal of Marital & Family Therapy. 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. At present she is a lecturer at Saint Joseph College in West Hartford, Connecticut.