American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy
organization
The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) is a professional association in the field of marriage and family therapy representing more than 50,000 marriage and family therapists throughout the United States, Canada, and abroad.
History
Founded in 1942 as the American Association of Marriage Counselors, the AAMFT has been involved with the problems, needs and changing patterns of couples and family relationships. A central premise of AAMFT is that marriage and family therapists should treat relationships within families rather than the symptoms of individuals based on a view that individuals are part of relationship systems.
Goals
The association focuses on increasing understanding, research and education in the field of marriage and family therapy.
The AAMFT aims to:
Facilitate research, theory development and education,
Establish and implement standards for programs that serve as the basis for accreditation,
Establish implement standards for clinical supervision, professional ethics and the clinical practice of marriage and family therapy.
Serve as a recognized accreditor in North America for the accreditation of MFT academic programs in the United States and Canada.
Continuing Education
The AAMFT conducts an annual national conference in the United States each fall as well as a week-long series of continuing education institutes in the summer and winter.
Accreditation of Academic Programs
AAMFT's "is the nationally recognized accrediting agency that accredits Master's degree, doctoral degree, and post-graduate degree clinical training programs in marriage and family therapy throughout the United States and Canada."
Licensing of Marriage and Family Therapists
Within the United States, marriage and family therapy is regulated by individual states.
The public source identifies “American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy” as organization. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around American, Association and Marriage.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4743026. VIAF identifies the subject as 150731203. The Library of Congress control number is n79052644. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942.
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This entry incorporates text from “American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.