Personologists will be the most fortunate beneficiaries of the papers collected in this volume. We have long been starved of a comprehensive theory of personality. When psychologists pronounced a ban on “grand theories” decades ago, our rush toward fragmentation and specialization accelerated wildly. Liberating for some psychologists, this movement was disastrous for the study of personality. “Persons” were replaced by “personality variables” amenable to experimental and psychometric pieties; our journal fare degenerated into shallow papers on limited topics, obsession with methodology, and parochial squabbles. Our textbooks rehashed and simplified ancient lore and promoted mere “notions” to the status of serious theory. Having abandoned theoretical work, we have long needed a rescuer. We have one in the late Silvan Tomkins.

Tomkins had begun to extend his pathbreaking work on affect theory to the more difficult project of a comprehensive theory at about the time I was privileged to spend a fellowship year (1968–1969) studying with him. Captured by the sheer intellectual power of those early insights, I have continued to work with Tomkins's ever-evolving theory. He was modifying and enriching this theoretical vision until his death. Appreciating that the theory really is dense and complex, as Brewster Smith warns in his general introduction to this volume, I feel obligated to offer what I hope may be helpful to readers by addressing two key questions: What do we ask of a “grand theory,” and does Tomkins's work deal with these issues? How can one work with the theory?