Women & Queer Psychoanalysts, No. 2.
Nic Waal (1905–1960), Norwegian psychoanalyst, pioneer of child psychiatry, and member of the wartime resistance. Yad Vashem named her Righteous Among the Nations.
Something unusual happened during her analysis: she suddenly began speaking a language that did not exist. Not Norwegian, not German, not any known language. Her analyst asked her to free-associate to each syllable, and they cracked open one by one — Bosche was "God" from a Russian prayer, Taina was "secret," Moi-moi was "I am happy." She used a language she had never learned to say a childhood she had never been allowed to speak.
This woman who spoke in tongues on the couch went on to do the following: dispatched by Ernest Jones to Nazi Berlin to investigate the arrest of psychoanalysts; organized the transfer of fourteen Jewish children to Sweden, all of whom survived; imprisoned in Grini detention camp, resumed underground work upon release. The child psychiatric institute she founded after the war is still in operation.
She turned Wilhelm Reich's body theory into a workable clinical diagnostic tool. She proved that a psychoanalyst can be a clinician, an underground fighter, and the person who saves children's lives — all at once.