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Nedd Willard (August 23, 1926 – July 12, 2018) was an American author and artist living inThorens-Glières, France, andGeneva, Switzerland. He was a merchant sailor, university teacher and worked in public relations for theWorld Health Organization.
Born in New York City, Willard was amerchant sailor on theHudson River and on theAtlantic Ocean during the Second World War, after which hehitchhiked across the United States, doingodd jobs to earn his living. He toured Spain on a motorcycle in the 1960s and earned hisdoctorate at theSorbonne with a dissertation on the subject of "Genius and Madness in the 18th Century".[1]
Willard taught at theUniversity of New Hampshire andColumbia University[2] and then began work atinternational institutions. In 1959 he was director of theFederation of French Alliances in the United States.[3]
Willard spent three months of professional activity inEthiopia and three months inCameroon. For six years he was chief ofpublic information for theWorld Health Organization in India and Southeast Asia, followed by an assignment aseditor-in-chief ofWorld Health magazine of the same agency. He then became editor ofUN Special, a magazine forinternational civil servants in Geneva. In 1981, he was the information attaché for a world survey in preparation for the organization's fifth World Conference on Smoking and Health.[2]
He became afree-lance journalist[4][5] and was a member of the Advisory Circle of theSeva Foundation.[6]
In 1956, Willard was married to Diana Kent (Sharp), whom he met while she was doingpostgraduate work in French literature at theSorbonne, where Willard was teaching. They had a son, Ethan, and a daughter, Briar.[3][7]
His second wife was Lucia Maloney, a classical Indian dancer who died September 21, 1976, in London, England.[8] His third wife was Poppy Willard.[9]
Willard died in Switzerland in July 2018 at the age of 91.[10]
Willard diligently analyzes the conception of Man, Genius and Madness such as it appears in the writings ofDiderot, in theEncyclopédie, in theTableau de Paris, byLouis-Sébastien Mercier and in the works ofOffray de La Mettrie and themarquis de Sade. It is a pity that Willard omits pointing to the medical works of this era (Pinel,Cabanis, etc.). And, what's more, that he ignores, it seems, several of the most important studies on this subject (Lange-Eichbaum,Semelaigne, etc.). The author does not make the necessary distinction between neuroses, psychoses and troubles of intelligence. Nevertheless, this monograph is a useful contribution to the knowledge about the position taken by the principal French literary and scientific movement in the 18th century concerning the "irrational" behavior of the individual.[12]
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