He studied medicine at University College London, and worked briefly as a psychiatrist for the Maudsley Hospital.
He grew up in Dummer, Hampshire, where his family owned most of the village and his father was "the local representative of both Church and State".
He believed that the ideal of rationality proposed by modern psychiatry alienated the adult from his or her creative inner processes.
[4] Rycroft was a consultant psychoanalyst at the Tavistock Clinic from 1956 until 1968, and for a period of time was an assistant editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and a training analyst with Scottish psychologist R.D.
He wrote extensively in a wide range of magazines, including The Observer and The New York Review of Books.