Although "The White Negro" takes as its subject a subcultural phenomenon, it represents a localized synthesis of Marx and Freud, and thus presages the New Left movement and the birth of the counterculture in the United States. Rollyson suggests that Mailer dismissed a Freudian approach to psychology that called for the adjustment of the individual to societal norms and instead espoused Wilhem Reich's emphasis on sexual energy and orgasm. Christopher Brookeman created a possible motivation for Mailer through his idea of Marxism combined with a kind of "Reichian Freudianism" to find solutions "in the better orgasm" which in turn would allow for the rise of one's "full instinctual potential". Reich inspired Mailer as one of the few intellectuals or writers in general who had deeply explored the power, primacy and potential of the male orgasm. "The White Negro" is explicitly influenced by Reich in two primary ways: the exaltation of male sexual eruption and the related theme of the virile, iconoclastic male hipster casting off societal rules and impositions to be led instead by his sex, his body and his instincts. These provide a balm and shield against all physical and mental ailments and diseases, including cancer. Mailer makes a comparison of the hipster hero with other outliers in society such as the Negro, the lover and the psychopath. He commends the social outliers' ability to live in a "burning" present, one with a continuous awareness of their closeness to death. Likewise, Mailer's admiration for Linder's description of the psychopath in "Rebel without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of the Criminal Psychopath" influenced his formulation of the drama of psychopath as being "one that, in the end, centers on his quest for love". This quest for love — or "the search for an orgasm more apocalyptic than the one which preceded it" — allows the psychopath to become "an embodiment of the extreme contradictions of society which formed his character".