Although Hoel was glad to get out of the village, life in the big city came as a shock to him, and for a long time he felt very insecure in front of his urban peers.

Gradually he managed to integrate and find friends among the students, in 1913 he started working as a teacher at Ragna Nielsen's Latin School [no].

Harald Grieg got him a job as a consultant for Gyldendal Norsk Forlag and Erling Falk made him the editor of Mot Dag.

In 1922, Hoel's first short story collection was published, which was strongly influenced by the German expressionists and mainly Hjalmar Söderberg.

Also in his younger years Hoel was a radical along with mostly all his friends and sympathized with the Bolsheviks, already in the 1920s he critically commented on the course of the USSR young government.

Hoel established himself as an unbiased critic, who was not influenced by his own literary tastes, even if he felt a certain amount of scepticism towards modernism and experimental prose.

The idea of a "protective barrier", developed by the child under the influence of the guilt and shame constantly instilled in him by his parents, explains the later behavior of the neurotic person, who uses this "armour" to suppress his inner anxiety and his desires.

[7] Hoel contributed to Reich's German language periodical Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie und Sexualökonomie (Journal for Political Psychology and Sex Economy) and was the editor-in-chief of issues nos.

Journalists in Nazi Germany called Hoel the "evil spirit" of the Norwegian intellectuals and he was abused on German radio.

The war shocked Hoel, and for many years thereafter he reflected on collaborationism and treason, trying to understand how such a significant number of Norwegians - including Norway's greatest writer, Knut Hamsun, could support Nazism.

Largely based on Hoel's own childhood, the book demonstrates a strong influence of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich.

[13][1][2] In 1935, going through a mid-life crisis, Hoel published the novel 14 Days to Frosty Nights (Fjorten dager før frostnettene).

Based on the author's own life, it again demonstrates the considerable influence of Reich's theories: the protagonist, a well-known doctor, on his 40th birthday looks back and tries to evaluate the years he has lived.

Once again drawing on the events of his own life and developing the theme of sexual freedom and Reich's early ideas, the author puts the hero in the shoes of himself as a young man.

Years later, as a fighter of Norwegian resistance the hero meets his son, a Nazi, follower of Quisling and a collaborator, who leads the arrest of his father.

From 1929 to 1959 Hoel was the editor of the publisher's "Gold Series", where he introduced a number of foreign authors, often with an astounding foresight for which works would remain.

The series comprised 101 books — including works from authors such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Franz Kafka.

The author analyzes the psychology of a middle-aged Norwegian village in the nineteenth century and shows the roots of the vices — anger, distrust, narrow-mindedness — that become a fruitful soil for totalitarian ideology.