John Kerr was born in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 31, 1950. He was the son of the New York Times drama critic Walter Kerr, and the playwright and humorist Jean (Collins) Kerr. He graduated from Portsmouth Abbey School in Portsmouth, R.I., in 1967, received a Bachelor's of Science degree in political science from Harvard University in 1971, and pursued his doctorate degree in psychology from New York University.

Trained as a clinical psychologist at NYU, Mr. Kerr worked as a staff psychologist in diverse inpatient and outpatient settings. In addition, he was for many years the senior editor at The Analytic Press, a publisher of books for psychoanalysts and other mental health professionals.

In addition to writing articles for various psychoanalytic journals, John Kerr was the co-editor of "Freud and the History of Psychoanalysis” and of “Attachment Theory: Social, Developmental, and Clinical Perspectives." He was formerly a research associate at the Institute for the History of Psychiatry at N.Y.-Cornell Weill Medical Center, and an Erikson Scholar at Austen Riggs Center. He was also a member of the Rapaport-Klein Discussion Group, Stockbridge, Mass.; a visiting teacher at the Harvard Medical School; and an honorary member of the William Alanson White Society of New York. Among the authors he has worked with as an editor are Philip Bromberg, Beatrice Beebe, Frank Lachmann, Joseph Lichtenberg, James Foss- hage, Bernard Brandchaft, Laura Tessman, James Herzog, Jack Drescher, Susan Coates, Paul Lippmann, and Arnold Richards.

Mr. Kerr is perhaps most well-known as the author of "A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, & Sabina Spielrein," which was published by Knopf in 1993. A detailed historical study of the psychoanalytic movement and the codification of psychoanalytic theory, it read like an unfolding mystery and in 2011 was made into a movie directed by David Cronenberg and starring Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender.

A native New Yorker, Mr. Kerr moved to Portland 18 years ago and embraced it as his new home. In addition to working as a private editor, he began writing a play about the American psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan, and enjoyed performing in a number of local theatrical productions.

Mr. Kerr is survived by a step- daughter, Victoria Aristizabal and her companion William Duncanson, of Portland; his sister, Kitty Kerr Mahin and husband Tom, of Arlington, Mass.; and three brothers, Gil Kerr and wife Dorothy, of Ponte Vedra, Fla., Greg Kerr and wife Cindy, of Coopersburg, Pa., and Colin Kerr [’71 –ed.] of Red Cloud, Neb.; as well as numerous nieces and nephews.

John was predeceased by his parents and his older brother, Chris Kerr, who died in 2010.