The author compares Crime and Punishment and The Trial as examples of the same psychological pattern. She is particularly interested in clarifying certain psychological points about Raskolnikov by reading backward from K. of The Trial to Raskolnikov. Citing an abundance of parallels in character and event between the two novels, the author contends that the psychological parallel is twofold: in each novel the hero has a momentous confrontation with authority (ultimately paternal) and a special relationship with women who are clearly either mother or sister images. Both stories are basically Oedipal in nature, a fact that goes far to explain the deep, pervading, unconscious sense of guilt in Raskolnikov and K. The essay is good, but for an adequate psychological account of both novels, Freud needs to be supplemented by Erikson.