John Kerr

John Michael Kerr (January 31, 1950 – July 18, 2016) was an American editor, psychologist, and author raised in New York City. He was best known for his 1993 nonfiction book A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, which explores an episode in the history of psychoanalysis. It examined the relationship between Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Sabina Spielrein. Early life and family Kerr was born in Washington, D.C., to mother Jean Kerr and father Walter Kerr shortly before their relocation to Larchmont, New York. He was one of six siblings, the oldest being Christopher, his twin Colin, and younger Gilbert, Gregory, and Kitty. Raised in a house of writers, his family was the subject of humorous articles written by his mother that would be collected into the volume Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1957). Education, visiting scholar After a degree in political science from Harvard University, Kerr entered graduate school in psychology at New York University. Although not completing his doctorate, his learning in the field enabled him to fill the position of visiting scholar at Cornell University, Harvard, the Austen Riggs psychiatric treatment center in Stockbridge, Mass., and the William Alanson White Institute, which trains psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, located in New York City. Work as editor At Cornell he met Paul E. Stepansky, a medical historian. He offered Kerr the position of associate editor at the Analytic Press, which published books for an audience primarily of psychotherapists. Accordingly, the company "through the 1980s and 1990s functioned as part incubator, part finishing school for books written by therapists". Stepansky described Kerr then: “He was a dazzling intellect... . I would give him manuscripts to review, and the reviews were these wide-ranging meditations, stylistic gems, with commentary that was often more illuminating than the manuscript itself.”