Ola Raknes (17 January 1887 – 28 January 1975) was a Norwegian psychologist, philologist and non-fiction writer. Born in Bergen, Norway, he was internationally known as a psychoanalyst in the Reichian tradition. He has been described as someone who spent his entire life working with the conveying of ideas through many languages and between different epistemological systems of reference, science and religion (Dannevig, 1975). For large portions of his life he was actively contributing to the public discourse in Norway. He has also been credited for his contributions to strengthening and enriching the Nynorsk language and its use in the public sphere. Raknes was known as a thorough philologist and a controversial therapist. Internationally he was known as one of Wilhelm Reich's closest students and defenders.
Family Ola Raknes was the son of the farmer Erik Askildson (Askjellson) Raknes (1856–1926) and Magdali Olsdotter (born Raknes) (1859–96) and grew up at the family farm of Raknes in Hamre Municipality on the island Osterøy in the Osterfjorden fjord near Bergen in a strict pietist environment. There were altogether 10 children of whom 7 grew up to become adults, and five of his siblings emigrated to the United States. He was married twice: in his first marriage in 1911 with Aslaug Vaa (1889 – 1965, the marriage was dissolved in 1938) they begot the children Magli (1912–1993), Anne (1914–2001), Tora (1916–1995), Erik (1919–) and Tor (1923–). The second marriage in 1941 with Gjertrud Bonde (1913–1975) gave him the daughter Ada (born 1952).
Studies and work side by side Ola Raknes attended folkeskole (primary school) on the neighbouring farm and then worked for a while on the family's farm prior to enrolling at middelskole (the next higher level in the education system of that time) in f. After that he graduated from the Hambros skole in Bergen in 1904. He took his examen artium as private candidate at Kristiania katedralskole in 1907. During the winter of 1907–08 he joined the elephant seal-catching vessel Solglimt to the Crozet islands in the southern Indian Ocean to collect plants and animals for the university in Kristiania. A liverwort, Jamesoniella raknesii was named after him. During the summers between 1910 and 1916 he served his military draft duty. Ola Raknes took on miscellaneous teaching positions in the years between 1910 and 1914 and worked as a journalist from 1914 to 1916 in the newspaper Den 17de Mai ("the 17th of May") while at the same time continuing his studies. In addition he worked during this period as a hotel worker. In 1915 he took his cand. philol. linguistical-historical "embedseksamen" (a public exam required for most professional positions in the public sphere) with Norwegian language as major subject and English and French as minor subjects. His major thesis was about Egill Skallagrímsson. In 1916 he was headmaster at Larvik higher school for one year. In 1917 he got a position as lector in Norwegian language and Norwegian literature at Sorbonne in Paris, and he spent the four years here earnestly by studying general psychology, psychology of religion, biology, sosiology, and furthermore medieval literature, medieval philosophy and theology on the side of his teaching position. He continued these studies when, after Sorbonne, he began as lector in Norwegian at University College in London where he stayed from 1921 to 1922. Ola Raknes' working capacity was widely spoken of, and during a period he worked both as secretary for Det Norske Samlaget, while at the same time working on the dictionary and preparing his doctoral thesis in psychology of religion, Møtet med det heilage ("Encounter with the Holy"), which was published in 1927. The dissertation which was also published as a book (and republished again in the 1970s), investigates the phenomenon of religious ecstasy in view of what was then recent findings and theories in the fields of ethnology, but particularly in psychology and psychoanalysis. In 1924 he went on to finish studies in pedagogy. Apart from this he also worked as a literary translator. Raknes studied psychoanalysis at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute from 1928 to 1929 and later at the Orgone Institute in New York City in 1946. From 1929 on he had a private practice as psychoanalyst. He published some popularized essays on psychology which he collected in the book Fri vokster which was published in 1949. This was the first book which introduced Wilhelm Reich's theories and therapeutical practice to a Norwegian audience (Dannevig, 1975).
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