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I found this paper from Professor Emeritus Bjørn Killingmo's hand a brilliant one. As many will know, the concept of character has been of great importance in the Norwegian psychoanalytical tradition. Karen Horney, Otto Fenichel and Wilhelm Reich were among the many psychoanalysts who fled from the Nazi regime in Germany during the 1930s. Fenichel and Reich were invited to Norway by the Professor of Psychology Harald Krabbe Schjelderup (1895-1974), the Child Psychiatrist Nic Waal (1905-60) and the Philologist Ola Raknes (1887-1975). Raknes, who had been the analysand of all three of the above-mentioned German analysts (Nilsen, 2003), chose to work as a true Reichian therapist. Nic Waal was also loyal to Reich (Waal, 1975) as was the Norwegian psychoanalyst Marie Naevestad, who gave a paper to an audience of psychiatrists on Reich's contribution to the theory of neurosis (Nævestad, 1960).
At the Dikemark psychiatric hospital in Oslo, where I worked in the 1950s, many of the young psychologists and coming psychiatrists were interested in psychoanalysis. One of the psychiatrists told me that he wanted to have analysis but hesitated because he feared he would not get a job in a psychiatric hospital if he did. Wanting analysis was seen as an indication of not being able to withstand the difficulties at work! Nevertheless some of the co-workers were in analysis with Ola Raknes.
I started my training with Raknes in 1959, meeting with him for two sessions a week for two years and one session a week for the following 6 months.
He focussed on my respiration and the corresponding muscular movements. On the couch, I lay in my swimming trunks trying to follow the rhythm of my breath while describing my associations. Raknes was very open and gentle, and explained what was going on. He found some tense muscular points, and through palpations, tried to overcome what stopped me from letting go of the tensions.
Nearly 50 years later, I remember some peaks of my t