Obituary

William Kraemer died suddenly at his home on 30 December, at the age of 71.

He was born in Essen in 1911. The outer and inner events of his childhood and youth could be described as stormy. A lecture of his given at the Conference of the Guild of Pastoral Psychology began thus: ‘When I was three years old my parents divorced and war broke out’.

With the advent of Hitler in 1933 he left Nazi Germany and embarked on his life's career. He qualified as a doctor in Siena in 1936. It was also during these years of Nazi dictatorship that Williams first discovered Jung, and through him was able to find meaning in political, religious and world events. He began his training as an analytical psychologist in 1939 under the supervision of Dr H. G. Baynes.

He then came to Britain, and his touching loyalty to the country of his adoption sustained him for the rest of his life. He spent his first four years as a master at Lancing College. In 1943 he joined the staff of the Davidson Clinic, Edinburgh, leaving there as their Medical Director in 1957 in order to move to London, and to go into private analytic practice. He was a co-founder and became Hon. Psychiatric Consultant of the Edinburgh Marriage Guidance Council, a rôle he continued to fulfil for the London M.G.C.

In the early years of his professional membership of the Society of Analytical Psychology William took a quiet part in its life, giving seminars to the trainees, and was a member of the Council and the Professional Committee for some years. But perhaps his true vocation was to knock down fences, to extend boundaries and to bring diverse elements together. His industry and fervent spirit of enquiry increasingly caused him to pursue his abiding interests in the overlap between the dynamics of religion, politics and psychology, the links between the archetypal aspects of the child and the disturbed adult. He was dedicated to young people and their struggles, never losing touch with the child within him