Nic Waal

Nic Waal, born Caroline Schweigaard Nicolaysen in Kristiania, Norway (1 January 1905 – 28 May 1960) was a Norwegian psychiatrist, noted for her work among children and adolescents in Norway where she is known as "the mother of Norwegian pediatric and adolescent psychiatry." She was also active in the Norwegian resistance during World War II, and was named as one of the Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem.[1][2][3]

Nic Waal
Born	Caroline Schweigaard Nicolaysen (1905-01-01)1 January 1905 Kristiania
Died	28 May 1960(1960-05-28) (aged 55)
Nationality	Norwegian
Other names	Nic Hoel
Education	Cand.med.
Alma mater	University of Oslo
Occupation	Psychiatrist
Years active	1939-1960
Employer	Nic Waal Institutt
Known for	Pediatric and adolescent psychiatry, psychoanalysis, Righteous Among the Nations
Spouse(s)	Sigurd Hoel Wessel Waal Alex Helju
Children	Helge Waal Berit Waal
Parent(s)	Vilhelm Bernhoft Nicolaysen Anna Horn

Biography

Caroline Schweigaard Nicolaysen (known in her childhood as Bitteba) was the youngest of four children born to Vilhelm Bernhoft Nicolaysen, an Army officer, and Anna Horn. She grew up in the section of Oslo known as Homansbyen, apparently an active and curious child, but also unusually sensitive. According to her son Helge Waal, she was prone to psychosomatic illnesses as a young child; and indeed she completed her first year of gymnasium at home, due to illness. She attended the Oslo Cathedral School starting in the fall of 1921, where her schoolmates included Trygve Bull, Karl Evang, and Trygve Braatøy.[1]

She attended the University of Oslo, became politically active as a radical socialist, and finished her medical studies in 1930. She was associated with the Mot Dag movement and worked as an editor in the periodical Æsculap. The political convictions she developed as a student set the foundation for a lifelong engagement in social causes, especially related to the needs of children, adolescents, and women.[1]

Plagued with her own emotional problems all her life, she first underwent psychoanalysis with Harald Schjelderup in Norway while she was a student. In 1927 she married the writer Sigurd Hoel.[4] She continued her psychoanalysis in Berlin as a student under Salomea Kempner,[5] and in 1933 and 1934 she was accepted in the German and Danish-Norwegian Psychoanalytic associations, respectively.[2] In 1936, Sigurd Hoel and she divorced, and in 1937 she married Wessel Waal and took the last name Waal for good.[1]

While in Berlin, Waal became associated with Wilhelm Reich and accompanied him when he fled Nazi persecution by moving to Norway. She continued her training first under another refugee from the Nazi regime, the Austrian Otto Fenichel, and then with Reich until 1939, when she opened her own psychoanalytic practice and joined the staff at Gaustad psychiatric hospital, where she remained on staff until 1947.[3]

During the German occupation of Norway from 1940 to 1945, Waal became active in the underground resistance to the occupation. Among other activities, she was central in assuring the escape of Jewish children from Oslo, thereby saving them from deportation and certain death.[6] For this effort, she was named among the Norwegian Righteous among the Nations. She was also active in the Norwegian clandestine intelligence service, XU.[7] In the spring of 1945, she was briefly arrested and escaped to Sweden.

Waal resumed her professional activities immediately after the war. She remained on the staff at Gaustad and also at Ullevål hospital, but also worked in Denmark, United States, Switzerland, and France, with Serge Lebovici. She was remembered by Cyrille Koupernik as "that Norwegian madwoman". In 1951, she was board certified as a psychiatrist, and in 1953, as one of the first in Norway, within paediatric and adolescent psychiatry.[1]

Soon after her application to be the chief of staff at the newly formed Institute for Paediatric and Adolescent Psychiatry at Rikshospitalet was turned down (supposedly because her physical presentation was messy) in 1951, she started her own institute, named Nic Waals Institutt; first in her basement in the suburb Husebygrenda and eventually to the "blue house" in Munkedamsveien near Skillebekk.[1]

Waal remained professionally active as the director of her institute until her death in 1960, also finding time to help juvenile offenders. She had two children with Wessel Waal, the psychiatrist Helge Waal (who also became her biographer) and the child psychologist Berit Waal Skaslien. She divorced Waal and married Alex Helju in 1951, who died in a boating accident in 1954.[1][8]

Professional contributions and legacy

In spite of her personal problems, Nic Waal maintained an active and passionate professional life, integrating advocacy on public health issues, a strong interest in teaching, and clinical discipline into a broad range of issues in her field. She made lasting contributions within the areas of:[1]

• The practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, usually within the context of Wilhelm Reich's framework but independently of his views. She did pioneering research and clinical work within the field of somatic psychiatric diagnostic techniques.
• Paediatric and adolescent psychiatry as a distinct field in Norwegian mental health
• Human sexuality, particularly among children and adolescents.
• Education - her institute provided educational programs for six distinct professions, including non-medical professionals such as psychologist, social workers, and clinical educators

When interviewed by the Norwegian radio shortly before her death, she said:

Many people think something with their heads and feel something different with their heart. Many close completely off their feelings when they think. This is often called being logical. But the heart also has its logic. It is said that women think with their hearts - as if this was something contemptible .... I am inclined to say that the restless and spontaneous heart behind opinions was and is the most important in opinions earlier, now, and in the future.

Svært mange mennesker mener noe med hodet og føler noe annet med hjertet. Mange stenger helt av for hva de føler når de tenker. Det kalles ofte å være logisk. Men hjertet har også sin logikk. Det sies lett at kvinnen tenker med hjertet - som om det var foraktelig. (...) Jeg er tilbøyelig til å si at det urolige og spontane hjertet bak meningene var og er det viktigste i meninger før, nå og i fremtiden.

[3]

The Nic Waal Institute, though renamed for some time, now continues as a leading regional teaching and clinical institution in Oslo under the auspices of Lovisenberg Diakonale Sykhus.[9]

Literature

• Waal, Nic (1938). Filmen og barna (in Norwegian). Oslo: Tiden. - a book on the medium of film and its effect on children.
• Waal, Nic (1948). Vi og smårollingene våre i det første året (in Norwegian). Oslo: Tiden. - a book on parenting infants.
• Waal, Nic; Bjørn Christiansen; Bjørn Killingmo (1956). Personlighetsdiagnostikk med henblikk på strukturbeskrivelse : utkast til begrepssystem (in Norwegian). Oslo: Nic Waals Institutt. - "Personality diagnosis with the purpose of structural descriptions - a publication of her institute.
• Waal, Nic; Anne Grieg; Mogens Rasmussen (1957). Nic Waal's metode for somatisk psykodiagnostikk : beskrivelse av undersøkelsesmetoden med utkast til begrepssystem (in Norwegian). Oslo: Nic Waals Institutt. - an outline of Waal's somatic diagnostic methodology.
• Waal, Nic (1962). Er det foreldrenes skyld? (in Norwegian). Oslo: Cappelen. - published posthumously, but translated to several languages, on the role of parenting and sexual neuroses.
• Waal, Nic (1969). Anne-Marie Auestad, Borger Haavardsholm (ed.). Utvalgte faglige skrifter (in Norwegian). Oslo. - selected writings by Nic Waal.
• Waal, Helge (1991). Nic Waal : det urolige hjerte (in Norwegian). Oslo: Pax. ISBN 82-530-1530-5. - biography authored by her son, Helge Waal.
• Rottem, Øystein (1996). LystLesninger : åtte essays om kjønn og identitet i norsk litteratur (in Norwegian). Oslo: Cappelen akademisk forlag. ISBN 82-456-0034-2. - biographical essays of Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun, Sigurd Hoel, Agnar Mykle, and others
• Waal, Nic; Einar Moe (2003). Nic Waals institutt : pioner og aktør i norsk barne- og ungdomspsykiatri gjennom 50 år. Oslo: Nic Waals Institutt. ISBN 82-991501-9-1. - anniversary publication for her institute.

See also

• Ola Raknes

External links

• Nic Waal – her activity to save Jews' lives during the Holocaust, at Yad Vashem website

References

1. Lange, Jon (2002). "Nic Waal - norsk barne- og ungdomspsykiatris mor". Tidsskrift for Nen norske Lægeforening (in Norwegian). Oslo: Legeforeningen (Norwegian Medical Association). Retrieved 2008-10-02.
2. "Psychoanalytikerinnen. Biografisches Lexikon/Nic Waal" (in German). Psychoanalytikerinnen. Retrieved 2008-10-02.
3. von der Lippe, Anna. "Nic Waal" (in Norwegian). Oslo: Pax. Archived from the original on 2012-03-15. Retrieved 2008-10-02.
4. Characterized as a marriage consisting primarily of correspondence, it ended in divorce in 1936, but some of Waal's earlier writings were under the name "Nic Hoel."
5. Salomea Kempner was one of the leading psychoanalysts of her time. Apparently she ended her days in the Warsaw Ghetto, though details are unknown.
6. All children deported with the SS Donau, which they surely would have been sent with, were immediately sent to the gas chambers at Birkenau
7. Sæter, Einar; Sæter, Svein (2007) [2007]. XU - I Hemmeleg Teneste 1940-45 (in Norwegian) (3rd (revised) ed.). Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget. p. 305. ISBN 978-82-521-7208-9.
8. Apparently, she and Waal became close again after Helju died and until her own death in 1960
9. "Nic Waals Institutt" (in Norwegian). Oslo: Lovisenberg Diakonale Sykhus. Archived from the original on 2007-10-31. Retrieved 2008-10-03.