Hughes' ideas, and the way they are expressed in Consciousness and Society, have become paradigms of twentieth-century scholarship. In dealing with the changing social thought after 1890 in Europe, Hughes covers a wide array of thinkers and issues in a scholarly, yet graceful manner. His is a study of the "cluster of genius" of Europe at that time: Croce, Durkheim, Freud, Weber, and Nietzsche, as well as other great European minds. The book explores questions that are still relevant in today's society: Is the separation of facts and values tenable, or even desirable

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This book gives a general interpretation of the work of the European social thinkers who dominated the 1920's. It is a study of the transformation of Victorian positivism into 20th-century angst: the destruction of the idea of certainty in the social sciences independent of the values and orientation of the observer.

It discusses the ideas of intellectual giants such as Freud, Croce, bergson, Jung, Sorel, Marx, etc. providing a rich understanding of the development of a European metapsychology based on particular conceptions of human nature and society based on the unconscious, changing attitudes about time and the nature of knowledge and the basis of political thought and practice. Ultimately, these ideas provided the foundations for the development of psychological and psychotherapeutic theory and practice.