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Wilhelm Reich's Character Analysis (1933) is a classic in psychoanalytic literature. The popularity of his writings with the anti-authoritarian protest movement of the late 1960s was due principally to the appeal for them of his concept of 'sexual economy' and his demand for the politicization of private life, together with his criticism of Stalinist propaganda (before 1933), his warnings about the fascistic potential of the middle classes and his equation of repression with fascism. Because of his attempt to connect revolutionary aims with nature worship, Reich is typified as a late descendant of those 'true socialists' that Marx criticized. Dahmer elaborates on the differences between Reich's 'sexual economy' ('orgonomy') on the one hand and, on the other, historical materialism and psychoanalysis, both claimed by Reich as being his bases. The emerging crucial differences between these two great critical theories and Reich's views necessitate the determination of the relations between psychoanalysis and social theory beyond the reductions of biologism; this is attempted in some outlined theses.