Ola Raknes
1) His Biography:
Born in Bergen, Norway, Ola Raknes was a psychologist, philologist, and non-fiction author who lived from 17 January 1887 to 28 January 1975. He was a well-known psychoanalyst in the Reichian tradition. He has been described as someone who has devoted his entire life to facilitating the exchange of ideas between various epistemological systems of reference, including science and religion, and through a variety of languages. He was actively contributing to Norwegian public dialogue for significant stretches of his life. He has also received praise for his contributions to the development and popular use of the Nynorsk language. Raknes was regarded as a controversial therapist and a thorough philologist. He was well-known around the world as one of Wilhelm Reich’s closest followers and defenders.
2) Main Themes:
Characteranalytic Vegetotherapy:
Raknes placed a strong emphasis on supporting clients in assisting themselves in living and working to release the intrinsic predisposition for development, the “free growth”. By removing the barriers and hindrances in the way, this might be accomplished. This was made possible when the person learnt to recognise themselves, together with their thoughts, feelings, and impulses. Integrating body sense was crucial in order to feel what one desired and give in to it if nothing significant abated it.
Raknes cited Wilhelm Reich’s definition of life as a continuous process with rhythmical shifts between mechanical tension, bioenergetic charge, bioenergetic discharge, and mechanical relaxation in the article “Life and Religion”. There, he wrote: “Most people are going to need a certain amount of practice in noticing their own bodily states before they can experience this life rhythm. But then they are clearly going to experience it, in particular in two guises: in the rhythmical flow that penetrates the entire body when it is able to freely go along with the breathing, and particularly intense in the state popularly called ‘living together’, that is in the sexual orgasm”.
Free child rearing:
Ola Raknes was a great supporter of giving children independence so they could choose their own experiences rather than having adults dictate how they should interpret the world. “Children always pick their own ideals. As soon as we put up ideals for them, they will start cheating on themselves. They are the ones who should make the choice”, he stated.
In an essay in the book Fri Vokster (“Free growth”), Raknes elaborates on how he, as a psychologist, sees the child’s developmental dynamics as being critically dependent on being given the opportunity to learn for itself to regulate such matters for example using the restroom, what and when to eat, and when and how much to sleep, through experiencing and by practising without the adults encouraging the child on.
Raknes thought that children should learn about moral principles such as not harming others or refraining from stealing, on their own, and not through parental warnings or restrictions: “I believe that when a child lies, it is because it has been punished for telling the truth. And when it steals, it is because it feels neglected in one way or another. […children] steal the love that isn’t given to them”. Raknes suggested, for instance, that it would be acceptable if the parents explained why humans wage war on one another and where this can go, but that they should let the child decide what to make of it all.
The child in each of us:
Ola Raknes concentrated so heavily on the child in his educational endeavours to promote values and as a therapist, even though he primarily treated adult patients. The article “Life and Religion”, the book “Fri Vokster”, his therapy, and the way he was himself, all focused on the child, the child in the adult and the child in itself. In the centre and teeming with life, the child which is free of sentimentality and childishness.
Rolf Gronseth, a friend and fellow student of his, said of him that Ola Raknes showed this kid within himself in his enthusiasm and joy and in pride in himself, as it can be seen in youngsters but that has been lost in most adults – but that he paired this with an extraordinary degree of solemn attitude. He viewed things plainly and simply, and he gave them labels that everyone could comprehend. Although it would be simple to mistake him for being naive, he actually had a wide perspective. He also found the use of force and the oppression of others to be abhorrent.
‘I too must be permitted to pass away at some point’, Ola Raknes reportedly remarked to his friend and fellow student Rolf Gornseth. A few days after turning 88, towards the end of January 1975, he passed away from a brief case of pneumonia. “The clarity of thought and emotion, conveyed through many languages, the ability to simplify with a taste for the big and significant parts of it all together with a genuine modesty and complete absence of ambitions for power made it a distinctive and a big experience to meet Ola Raknes”, says Einar Dannevig, summarising his impression of Ola Raknes as a man of spirit.
3) Orgonomy:
Raknes acknowledged that the Wilhelm Reich orgone theory, which expanded Freud’s idea of libido to include a general life energy that Reich called orgone, wasn’t fully supported by the natural sciences’ requirements for proof, but he believed that it must have some validity based on his own observations and experiences. A few years before his passing, Wilhelm Reich wrote the book Wilhelm Reich and orgonomy, in which he discusses the theory and its consequences for several scientific fields as well as for society in an accessible and illuminating way.
Raknes saw for himself during a 1953 visit to Reich’s estate “Orgonon” in Maine how Reich was allegedly able to employ this energy to create rain using a so-called cloudbuster, a technological device that is believed to focus and project orgone energy: The meteorological forecast indicated that the drought in this area, which had been ongoing for weeks, would continue to affect the Eastern United States. Reich then set the device at a specific location in the sky and turned it on for an hour and a half. He claimed that if everything is put up properly, rain should start to fall in 8–9 hours. And quite rightly too. After 8 hours, there was an 8-hour downpour that streamed across the area around the equipment, covering several tens of square kilometres.
Raknes visited Reich in the US six times after the war in order to keep his knowledge and abilities up-to-date with the advancement of Reich’s theories and practises. Then, when he got back to Norway, he would try to duplicate as many of the observations and experiments he had seen in Reich’s lab—experiments that laid the groundwork for the identification of bions and orgone energy in the human body.
Raknes believed that what Reich had discovered was what others had already known but had called it animal magnetism, chi, or prana instead. Additionally, Raknes thought that telepathy and clairvoyance were actual phenomena and that only dogmatism and narrow-mindedness could lead scientists to reject them.
He thought that further study and research into orgone energy would help to explain these phenomena. Raknes was drawn to the orgone theory because of his longstanding curiosity and interest in the history of religions, the religious experience, and how it affects people. He believed that the orgone theory could help to shed light on these topics on a scientific foundation. In addition, he believed that it represented an enlargement of therapeutic intervention, moving from being a restricted form of psychotherapy to meriting the moniker of biotherapy.
4) His Contribution to Psychoanalysis:
Ola Raknes was constantly looking for ways to improve therapeutic methods. He was also unsatisfied with traditional psychoanalytical explanations for man’s basic instincts, drives, and aggression. Additionally, he was dubious of Freud’s psychological dualism of these opposing basic drives, which initially moved between the instinct for sexuality and self-preservation and later between the life instinct (Eros) and the death instinct (Thanatos). Ola Raknes first heard the name Wilhelm Reich while he was living in Berlin, but it would be years before he really read anything by Reich. His studies of Freud and other “traditional” psychoanalysts were still very active.
After Reich’s book Charakteranalyse was published in 1933, Ola Raknes started to seriously consider following Reich’s teachings. After finishing that book, Raknes immersed himself in Reich’s Zeitschrift für politische Psychologie und Sexualökonomie, followed by Reich’s essays in numerous psychoanalytical magazines. Ola Raknes found it all to be really fascinating and insightful, but this did not prompt him to alter either his fundamental beliefs or his psychotherapy approach.
At the gathering of Scandinavian psychoanalysts in Oslo over Easter in 1934, Ola Raknes first encountered Wilhelm Reich. This strong personality greatly struck Raknes, and the clarity with which he presented himself during discussions of the core ideas of the issues he explored and, in his presentations, helped Raknes get a better grasp of many things. The psychoanalytical theories of Freud served as Wilhelm Reich’s starting point, but as early as 1925, he began developing his theory of sex economy based on observations made while working as a volunteer at his Vienna counselling centre for people with sexual problems. This work would continue until 1938.
Raknes’ first preference would have been to start an apprenticeship in therapy with Reich right away, but he lacked the means to get to Sweden, where Reich was working at the time. In any case, they reconnected in Luzern, Switzerland, in August of the same year during the 13th psychoanalytical congress. There, Ola Raknes passionately fought the exclusion of Reich from the International Psychoanalytical Association along with the two other Norwegian participants, child psychiatrist Nic. Hoel and psychology professor Harald Schjelderup (who would later change her name to Nic. Waal).
Later during the convention, the Norwegian delegation received approval as a separate group, allowing them to accept Reich as a member. However, Wilhelm Reich declined the invitation to join when he relocated to Norway later in 1934. Raknes was working as an apprentice therapist at the time with Otto Fenichel, who he considered to be a friend and colleague of Reich’s. He had stated to Fenichel right away that if Reich was in Norway, he would visit him.
Reich started a character analysis seminar soon after his arrival in Norway. Despite not having undertaken any such analysis himself, Raknes was admitted to this. On a few of his patients that he applied the procedures he had acquired, the outcomes were generally positive. Raknes asked Wilhelm Reich if he would accept him for apprentice therapy in the fall of 1936 due to both personal issues and the belief that Reich’s therapeutic approach was far more effective than the standard Freudian technique he had thus far used.
Reich was unsure and thought Ola Raknes was a little too old and armoured, but he eventually agreed. One of the first patients to whom Reich continuously employed his novel method — which he called characteranalytic vegetotherapy—was likely Ola Raknes. Raknes’ extensive character remodelling, or apprentice therapy, took over three years, three sessions per week, and was laborious owing to his advanced age. He sometimes questioned whether he would ever be able to complete the work he still believed he was designed to perform in a way he would be satisfied with. If he couldn’t manage that, there wouldn’t even be a purpose to live.
But after a long duration of time, he eventually noticed that the energies began to manifest; he also began to notice what was happening inside of his own body and what it would be like to be operating freely. He was surprised by how characteranalytic vegetotherapy and conventional psychoanalysis differed fundamentally. He had studied Reich’s book on character analysis and had used the approach on his patients, but having it work on his own body was a very different experience. In contrast to classical psychoanalysis, the technique was now expanded to include character interpretation, body posture, and the direct manipulation of somatic blockings.
5) His Legacy:
Ola Raknes discusses every facet of this contentious topic, including the liberation of sexual energy, the nature of functional thinking, mind-body functional identity, the four-beat orgasm formula, and the impact of life energy on religion, education, medicine, and psychology, among many other topics. Additionally, his own memories give an unexpectedly intimate layer. Raknes was one of the few people who was still devoted to Reich and who had his entire trust at the time of his passing. Raknes’ close collaboration with Reich and subsequent monitoring of every advancement in orgonomic research give Wilhlem Reich and Orgonomy a significant place in both the framework of Reich’s own works and the field of modern studies of life energy
