Jacobs stresses the importance in clinical work of more or less conscious rage which he considers to be a universal problem. Rage in some patients is found to be ultimately directed toward the smothering mother who will not let the child become an individual. What happens when this rage is repressed, however, is not clearly outlined in one case history. The author is highly speculative in relating the primal crime to stories of Jesus, said to have atoned for his wish to murder his smothering mother. Those who actually commit the crime are likened to Dostoevski's Raskolnikov and those who actually burned witches after the social chaos of the Black Death.