John Michael Kerr was born in Washington, D. C. on January 31, 1950. He received a degree in political science from Harvard University before entering New York University's graduate psychology program. He never got his doctorate, but became a visiting scholar at Cornell University, Harvard University, the Austen Riggs psychiatric treatment center, and the William Alanson White Institute. While he was a graduate student, the screenwriter Paul Schrader was looking for a research assistant to develop a script about the contentious relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and Kerr was hired. In 1981, Schrader abandoned the project, but Kerr turned his research into a book, A Most… Dangerous Method, which was published in 1993. The book was adapted into the 2002 play The Talking Cure and the 2011 film A Dangerous Method. He also worked as an editor at The Analytic Press. He died from complications of lung cancer on July 18, 2016 at the age of 66.