Daniel Harold Casriel

Daniel Harold Casriel
Dan Casriel talking about his 1972 book A Scream Away From Happiness
Born	(1924-03-01)March 1, 1924 New York City
Died	June 7, 1983(1983-06-07) (aged 59) Manhattan
Occupation	Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, writer

Daniel Harold Casriel (March 1, 1924 – June 7, 1983) was an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and writer from New York City. Dan Casriel's method of group psychotherapy is continued today. He also founded the Daytop treatment centers.

Daniel Harold Casriel was born in New York City on 1 March, 1924. He graduated from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1949 at age twenty-five. In 1950, he began his residency at the Kingsbridge Veterans' Administration Hospital in the Bronx. Eight months into his residency he was drafted by the military and sent to Okinawa where he served as an Army psychiatrist for a year and a half.

Casriel was a trainee at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Institute for Training and Research between 1949 and 1953 and spent 7½ years in analysis Dr. Abram Kardiner, the founder of the first psychoanalytic institute in the United States and a former analysand of Sigmund Freud. Casriel was also a past president of the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians.

In the winter of 1953 Casriel began private practice as a psychiatrist in New York City. Shortly thereafter he was appointed as a psychiatric consultant to the Metropolitan Hospital in East Harlem and the Court of Special Sessions in Manhattan where he became active in the treatment drug addicts.

In July 1962 Casriel visited the famous Synanon therapeutic community on the US West coast. So impressed with what he saw there, he moved into the community for a “closer look” and wrote a book about the experience ( "So Fair A House: The story of Synanon"). In February 1963, Casriel gave $2000 to seven members of Synanon to start a community on the East Coast. The result was a house on Greens Farm Road, Westport, Connecticut directed by Jack Hurst, former president of Synanon in Santa Monica.

In the summer of the same year, Casriel became the psychiatric consultant for the Daytop Lodge project on Staten Island, a kind of half-way house for the rehabilitation of convicted felons who were addicts. Later, he became cofounder, psychiatric director and medical superintendent of Daytop Village, now one of the world’s largest therapeutic communities.