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Reik's thesis is that the sex drive must be regarded as a biologically determined reaction conditioned by chemical changes within the organism; that love, tenderness, affection, in sharp contrast, are culturally determined; that Freud has created a great confusion among psychologists by extending the term sex to include a wide variety of biologically and psychologically determined reactions in person to person relationships. 'Between love and sex are differences of such a decisive nature that it is very unlikely they could be, as psychoanalysts assert, of the same origin and character' (p. 17). Freud and his fellows, he states, have emphasized the sexual drive and neglected the ego impulses. There is no such thing as sublimated sex, and the concept that cultural achievement represents in considerable measure the results of redirection of sexual impulses is incorrect. 'To assume that the crude sex drive can be used as a stepping stone to high cultural aims has as much sense as the assertion that the need to discharge urine can be deflected and the resultant pressure utilized as energy for achieving noble ends' (p. 58).
According to Reik, it was a 'fatal blunder' to conceive of love as aim-inhibited sex, but it is appropriate to characterize romantic love as 'an aim-inhibited desire of conquest or of the possessive urge' (p. 102). Love is younger than sex, was not derived from the relationship between the sexes, but was later fused with sex. Love was brought about by women, who reacting with envy and hostility toward the privileged position of men, revolted and began to play hard-to-get. 'They began to hold out on their men.' This set into motion reactions of courting, friendliness, kindliness; romance is derived from the opposition to sex on the part of women.
The author summarizes his theme in A New Theory of Drives which he suggests '… may represent the first contribution of neopsychoanalysis to biology' (p. 15). He postulates the existence of two principles