ABSTRACT
From its beginning, psychoanalysis in Norway was linked to the university, unlike most other countries, where it did not gain a similar academic foothold. An academic prodigy, Harald Krabbe Schjelderup earned a professorship in philosophy in 1922, when he was only 27 years old, then the youngest professor ever appointed in Norway. Teaching a philosophy and psychology course for all new students at the University of Oslo, Schjelderup introduced generations of new students in Norway to psychoanalysis, which he included in the curriculum. At an international psychiatry conference in 1936, Schjelderup presented a paper on character changes through psychoanalytic treatment, and described Wilhelm Reich's character technique as "the most important progress in psychotherapy since Freud". The collaboration between Schjelderup and Reich led to an ambitious research programme to investigate psychoanalytic tenets in a variety of scientific fields—for example, physiology and cellular biology—at the University of Oslo. When Germany occupied Norway, the psychoanalytic society was disbanded.
