William Guglielmo Niederland

Who was William Guglielmo Niederland?

William Guglielmo Niederland was a German-American psychoanalyst and a pioneer in the scholarly field of psychogeography. He was born in Schippenbeil, East Prussia, the son of an orthodox rabbi, and in early life was exposed to both the classic Talmudic education and to the secular learning of the Realgymnasium of Würzburg, Bavaria. After completing his medical studies at the University of Würzburg, he went on to an internship and residency in medicine. For years he served as an officer of the Department of Health for the industrial region of the Ruhr. In the 1950s, he began work with concentration camp survivors. He investigated and documented the particular characteristics of their reactions, coining the term "survivor syndrome" in 1961. He later worked with the Vietnam Veteran Working Group in restoring the concept of post-traumatic stress disorders to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980.