SOURCE: "Energy, Character, and Orgasm," in Wilhelm Reich, The Viking Press, 1972, pp. 13-32.

An English psychoanalyst, Rycroft is noted for his dream theory, which differs significantly from the dream theories of both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Rycroft maintains that dreams are "the sleeping form of creative imagination," rather than expressions of latent desires. In the following essay, he examines the influence of Freud's psychoanalytic theory on Reich's concepts of energy, character, and orgasm.

Reich's ideas about energy, character, and orgasm can only be understood in the light of their origin in the kind of psychoanalysis that he encountered in Vienna in the 1920s. At that time psychoanalysis was still under the unquestioned influence of Freud's ideal of a psychological theory that would satisfy all the criteria of a natural science.

As a young man Freud had worked as a physiologist under Ernst Brücke, who was a...