This is a short book, but its formulations are challenging and cover a vast range. It has a foreword by Jung written in 1959 for an English edition that did not materialize, and a foreword to the present edition by Gerhard Adler. The author's preface to the Spanish edition is included, and also a final chapter on the shadow in the form of a paper not published in other editions.

The book presents a psychological examination of the ethic of our culture, directed towards the crisis of the twentieth century and its historical antecedents. It suggests that whereas this ethic was once the source of consciousness and development, it now fails to contain the evil in the psyche of man and has fallen into decay. Both the psychic pattern of the ethic and also its state of decay are seen to be responsible for the phenomena of world wars, persecution and existential despair.

The author is not so much concerned with the conscious values as with the psychological