About the author
Professor Brett Kahr first entered the mental health field as a sixteen-year-old high school student who volunteered at a charity for disabled adolescents. At the age of nineteen years, he began working on a psychogeriatric ward with severely psychotic patients as part of his first psychology internship.
Since that time, Kahr has devoted his entire professional life to the field of mental health and has continued to do so over the last forty-five years on a full-time basis, as a clinician, as an academic, as a teacher, as a supervisor, as a researcher, as a writer, as a broadcaster, and as an organisational contributor.
Professor Kahr trained initially as a research psychologist, with a special interest in the cognitive processes of autistic and schizophrenic individuals, and then he qualified, subsequently, in both adult and couple psychotherapy and psychoanalysis and, also, in forensic psychotherapy and in parent–infant psychotherapy. He has also trained across many years as a medical historian.
Currently, he serves as Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in London and, also, as Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis and Mental Health at Regent’s University London.
A former Trustee of both the Freud Museum and the Freud Museum London and, also, of Freud Museum Publications, he has subsequently become both an Honorary Fellow of the Freud Museum London as well as the institution’s Honorary Director of Research, supervising the museum’s Academic Associates Scheme, as well as serving as Series Editor of the “Freud Museum London Series”, and, additionally, working as Senior Course Director of the impending “Certificate in Freud Studies” and “Diploma in Freud Studies”, which will be launched in 2026 in collaboration with the Scholars Network and the Scholars Committee of the British Psychoanalytic Council.
Professor Kahr holds many more honorary positions, including that of Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Psychotherapy and Mental Health at the Centre for Child Mental Health in London. Bournemouth University appointed him as a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Media and Communication, as had the University of Roehampton, in recognition of his contributions to media psychology, having worked for many years as Resident Psychotherapist at the British Broadcasting Corporation, having appeared regularly on BBC Radio 2 and other channels both nationally and internationally, and having become the Spokesperson for the BBC “Life 2 Live” campaign, designed to promote mental health. Kahr also serves as Consultant Psychotherapist for The Balint Consultancy and at the Queen Anne Street Practice, and also remains as Consultant in Psychology to The Bowlby Centre in London.
Currently, he works full-time in independent clinical practice in Holborn, in Central London, with individuals, and, also, with couples and with families.
He is a clinical registrant of both the British Psychoanalytic Council and, also, the Council for Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analysis, a constituent college of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy. In recognition of his services to the psychotherapy profession, the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy awarded him an Honorary Fellowship in 2021. And, in 2024, the British Psychoanalytic Council presented Professor Kahr with its “Outstanding Professional Leadership Award” in honour of his many lifetime contributions to the mental health community.
Professor Kahr is the author of twenty-two books, including the best-selling Sex and the Psyche, published by Penguin Books, and Life Lessons from Freud, commissioned by the philosopher Alain de Botton for the School of Life / Pan Macmillan series on “Life Lessons from Great Thinkers”. His books and chapters have appeared in American, Australian, Brazilian, British, Canadian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish editions. His popular text on Tea with Winnicott received a ranking as one of the “Books of the Year” in The Guardian newspaper in 2016. That volume, along with its sibling book, Coffee with Freud, has appeared subsequently in Chinese, Farsi, Japanese, Spanish, and Turkish translations.
His most recent books include Freud’s Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis, released in 2021, as the inaugural title of the “Freud Museum London Series”, and How to Be Intimate with 15,000,000 Strangers: Musings on Media Psychoanalysis, published in 2023, followed by Hidden Histories of British Psychoanalysis: From Freud’s Death Bed to Laing’s Missing Tooth, released in 2024, also part of the “Freud Museum London Series”. Other newly published books include Forensic Psychoanalysis: From Sub-Clinical Psychopaths to Serial Killers. And his forthcoming books, commissioned by Karnac Books, include the solo-authored text The Holes in Winnicott’s Trousers: The Brilliance and Shadows of a Psychoanalyst and, moreover, Grandfather Freud: The Memoirs of Anton Walter Freud, the autobiography of one of Sigmund Freud’s grandsons, describing his fight against the Nazis, which Kahr has edited for publication. In 2026, his book on Curing Madness: The Selected Works of Brett Kahr will be released by Routledge / Taylor |& Francis Group as part of its “World Library of Mental Health”.
Kahr has also served as series editor for more than eighty-five further book titles on such diverse topics as forensic psychotherapy, the history of psychoanalysis, and couple psychoanalysis, having founded the “Forensic Psychotherapy Monograph Series”, the “History of Psychoanalysis Series”, “The Library of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis”, “Interviews with Icons”, and the “Freud Museum London Series”, as well as having facilitated the formation of the “Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture Series” of books, for which he remains the Consulting Editor.
Across his long career, Kahr has trained over 1,000 psychotherapists and psychologists.
He has published over 1,000 books, chapters, articles, and reviews.
He has delivered over 4,000 public lectures.
He has appeared on over 1,000 radio and television programmes, promoting mental health.
His books have sold over 1,000,000 copies worldwide.
A lifelong fan of Karnac Books, Professor Kahr remains deeply honoured to have published many books with this amazing firm over many decades as well as having edited many monograph series as well for Karnac Books. For several years, he even worked as Advisory Editor-in-Chief at this firm and he remains a huge fan and, happily, a lifelong sufferer from “Karnacitis” – the best addiction in town!
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