Ola Raknes - Left-wing Society Involvement

Left-wing Society Involvement

As he took part in the shaping of society, both the Norwegian and in general, he was focusing on the forces that frustrate and impede free life expression, in the areas love and work both. He was deeply influenced in this by Reich's sex economical sociology and mass psychology. He was a member of Norwegian Democratic Group and he joined the circle of people centering on Orientering in 1953. He was a member of the Socialist People's Party also from that year, and that party's successor, the Socialist Left Party. His opinion was that the making conscious of the individual's bodily-psychological awareness, to which he could contribute through his work, had to progress hand-in-hand with societal changes – in the working place, in family life and in neighborhoods. He felt that the way society was organized created dependent individuals. Those family types and norms for child rearing which were prevalent created overwhelming sensations of angst, helplessness and feelings of littleness in the small child when its vital urges and needs – sexual or related to contact with other people, or other still – were thrashed, rejected or ignored. This in turn, Raknes felt, led, in the adult individual, to a necessity, in order for it to survive, for adaptation through one of two life strategies – either a constant, compulsive striving for power and competitive mentality, or equally compulsive attempts to ingratiate with those in power, through self-effacing submission and dutifullness. Ola Raknes thus placed the focus on the connection between current character traits in Norwegian society, such as feelings of either superiority or inferiority, competitiveness and self-effacing dutifullness, and characteristic structural traits in society itself such as concentration of power and bureaucratic control, in which the former provides fertile ground for the latter. (Grønseth, 2004)