Dan Merkur is a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist in private practice in Toronto. The author of Unconscious Wisdom (2000), he has developed a contemporary procedure that takes its lead from the natural self-healing process of the client’s unconscious mind, which is both revealed and concealed by dreams and other symbolic communications. A friendly interpersonal rapport and a reflective or meditative attitude place the client’s unconscious creativity in control of the therapeutic process. At the same time, unconscious obstacles to healing are analyzed with reference to unconsciously motivated behavior, early childhood experiences, and psychosexuality.

Dan is available by appointment to work with adolescents, adults, and couples. He is comfortable addressing a broad range of personal and interpersonal issues, varying in severity from discontent, anxiety, depression, and rage, through blockage in work, study, love, or joy, to personal tragedies, life crises and personality disorders.

Dan ordinarily meets with patients between one and four times weekly. He accepts sliding-scale patients. He does not prescribe psychiatric drugs nor bill through OHIP.

Dan holds a doctorate in comparative religion (Stockholm, 1985) and has academic research interests in religious experiences, considered historically, cross-culturally, and psychoanalytically. Affiliated with the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, Dan has taught at the University of Toronto, McMaster, Queen’s, Syracuse, and York Universities, and Auburn Theological Seminary. He teaches currently at the Living Institute in Toronto, which offers training in transpersonal psychotherapy. His clinical research interests include creativity, spirituality, ethics, self-actualization, and the theory of therapeutic change.

Dan is the author of twelve books and nearly forty articles. He is a member of the Toronto Society of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, the International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Religion, the North American Association for the Study of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.