Daniel Moshe Avrom Freeman

Daniel Moshe Avrom Freeman, 86, passed peacefully on November 16, 2025 at Princeton Medical Center, surrounded by his family.  Danny was born on January 21, 1939 in Toronto, Canada to Kenneth and Esther Freeman.  He attended the University of Toronto and received his M.D. in 1962. While at university, he co-founded Cuso International — the Canadian equivalent of the Peace Corps — by approaching Canadian university presidents with a proposal for coordinating student volunteer services abroad. He then served as a member of Cuso’s first National Executive Committee.

While completing a post-graduate internship at the University of Toronto, he met his wife, Patricia Freeman, in a Toronto restaurant called the Noshery. She remembers being struck by his “incredibly warm, natural, totally real, unaffected smile.”  For their first date, Danny and Pat went to see a movie at the Hiland Theater in Toronto, talking for multiple hours afterwards.  “I never had such a great discussion with anyone,” she later recalled in a speech at his 80 th birthday party. “It was so far flung and it was just amazing how his mind worked.”

Danny and Pat married on June 24, 1963.  The couple then moved to Oklahoma to promptly start their new life together, where Danny completed fellowships at the University of Oklahoma in psychosomatic medicine and cross-cultural psychiatry. As part of the program, he conducted research with the Kiowa Apache tribe and an all-Black farming community in Boley, Oklahoma.

After moving to Philadelphia for Danny’s medical residency at the University of Pennsylvania, Danny and Pat welcomed three children: Robert, Karen, and Laurie. They settled into their beloved home on Upsal Road in Jenkintown, which they soon filled with artwork, music, books, and souvenirs from their travels.

In 1969, Danny began his private practice as a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at his home office.  While continuing to serve his patients, he held associate professorships in psychiatry at Hahnemann University, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. He also worked as the clinical director of two different residential treatment programs for adolescents.

A prolific scholar, Danny published dozens of research papers about child development and cross-cultural psychoanalysis, which he presented at conferences in the US and abroad. He served on the editorial boards of multiple psychoanalytic journals, and spent 23 years as the chairman of two annual interdisciplinary colloquia for American Psychoanalytic Association.

Danny loved to travel both for his cross-cultural psychiatric work and for leisure. His children recall their father’s constant effort to expose them to other cultures and instill curiosity about the world, taking them on trips out west to attend ceremonies with the Native American tribe that he had worked with in Oklahoma.  During long family car trips, he would lead his children in sing-alongs for multiple hours. These sing-alongs continued into his time as a grandfather. After the death of folk singer Pete Seeger, he went with his son Robert to his granddaughters’ school to lead the students in singing Seeger’s music.

Danny had a lifelong passion for taking photos, which began when he formed a photography club in high school. He brought his camera with him as he traveled across the globe, amassing a library of tens of thousands of slides and photos to capture his memories.  

Every summer, he took his family to Cape Cod, eating lobster and taking nature walks at the crack of dawn. He always took photographs of spiderwebs, sprinkled with dew, glowing in the early morning light. 

Even as he collected professional achievements, Danny never stopped working to expand his own knowledge about the world. He published multiple articles on geopolitics in a local paper in Philadelphia — and took great glee in sending underlined newspaper clippings to his children.  As his wife Pat has described, “Danny is our rock and moral compass in all things.”

He is survived by his wife Patricia (nee Gilbert); his three children, Robert Freeman, Karen Singer-Freeman (Jose) and Laurie Lebrun (Kenneth); his sister Brenda Conway (Jerome); and his six grandchildren, Ari Singer-Freeman, Sylvan Lebrun, Elena Singer-Freeman, Max Lebrun, Cassidy Freeman and Skyler Freeman.  Daniel was predeceased by his brother David Freeman.

Relatives and friends are invited to funeral services, Monday, November 17, 2025, 1:00PM, at Joseph Levine & Sons, 4737 Street Rd., Trevose, PA. Chapel services may be viewed live at https://www.levinefuneral.com/trevose-webcam.html.

Interment will follow at Haym Salomon Memorial Park, Frazer, PA.

Shiva will be observed Monday evening from 7:00PM-9:00PM at the Social Room of 300 Bunn Dr., Princeton, NJ 08540.

In lieu of flowers, contributions in Daniel’s memory may be made to the Margaret S. Mahler Child Development Foundation (https://margaretmahler.org/Donate).

Arr. by Joseph Levine & Sons www.levinefuneral.com