After defining their intention of ascertaining how psychology can help in the search for truth, the authors then consider 'the sociological realities of crime and law, and the relation of psycho-analysis to their dialectic foundation'. Neither crime nor the criminal are objects which can be considered apart from their sociological reference.

Every society from the primitive onwards has had laws, against which there are always transgressors, and every society manifests the relationship of crime to the law by punishment, which involves subjective assent. To quote Malinowski's