Niederland, William Guglielmo

▪ 1994

      German-born U.S. psychoanalyst (b. Aug. 29, 1904, Schippenbeil, East Prussia [now Sepopol, Poland]—d. July 30, 1993, Englewood, N.J.), was the first to formulate (1961) a "survivor syndrome," which he defined as a feeling of self-reproach and severe guilt among survivors of Nazi death camps, natural disasters, and automobile accidents and which was manifested by symptoms of insomnia, nightmares, personality changes, chronic depression, disturbances of memory, anxiety, and psychosomatic illnesses. Niederland himself was a refugee from Nazi Germany, was interned in Britain as an enemy alien, and was able to assimilate some of his own experiences into his work. He had received M.D.'s from the Universities of Würzburg, Germany, and Genoa, Italy, before obtaining another from the New York Institute of Psychoanalysis. Niederland practiced medicine in Milan and served as a ship's doctor in the Philippines before arriving in New York in 1940. In his private practice he treated more than 800 persons who had been subjected to massive cumulative trauma, and from these sessions he coined the term survivor syndrome. Niederland taught at the University of Tampa, Fla., served as a staff psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, and from 1952 to 1974 was in private practice while also teaching. Niederland was intrigued with studying the psychological motives of explorers, including Columbus, and what he termed the "dark roots of creativity," an unconscious factor such as a defect or malformation that could result in "heightened bodily sensation" and spark genius. He was the author of some 200 articles and such books as Man-made Plague: A Primer on Neurosis (1948), Psychic Traumatization (1971), and The Schreber Case: Psychoanalytic Profile of a Paranoid Personality (1974), one of his most famous studies.

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