Silvan S. Tomkins

The book ""The Negro Personality: A Rigorous Investigation Of The Effects Of Culture"" by Bertram P. Karon is a comprehensive study of the impact of culture on the personality of African Americans. The author explores the historical and social factors that have shaped the African American experience, and how these factors have influenced their personality development. The book is based on extensive research and analysis of various aspects of African American culture, including religion, family, education, and community. Karon examines the unique challenges faced by African Americans in a society that has historically marginalized and oppressed them, and how these challenges have affected their sense of self and identity. The book also explores the ways in which African Americans have resisted and adapted to these challenges, and how they have developed their own cultural traditions and values. Overall, ""The Negro Personality"" is a thoughtful and insightful exploration of the complex relationship between culture and personality, and how this relationship has shaped the African American experience. This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Volume III: The Negative Affects: Anger and Fear and Volume IV: Cognition: Duplication and Transformation of Information

Volume I: The Positive Affects and Volume II: The Negative Affects

Silvan Tomkins was one of the most influential theorists on emotion and emotional expression. Over a period of 40 - some years - until his death in 1991 - he developed a set of original, important ideas about the nature of affect and its relationship to cognition and personality. Tomkins dealt with fundamental questions in a fresh and provocative way, establishing affect as a separate, biological system, and providing compelling data on discrete affect expressions. Several years before his death, Professor Tomkins agreed to bring his papers (unpublished and published) together into Exploring Affect for Cambridge Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction. He worked with Paul Ekman and Klaus Scherer to develop a structure for the book that would synthesize his theory of emotion. Unfortunately, he died before he was able to complete the process. Virginia Demos, who knew Professor Tomkins well, took on the enormous task of compiling the papers and writing connective material for the book. This volume of Tomkins selected writings on affect brings together his works of four decades and makes them available at a more receptive time in the field. It is a treasure trove of provocative, insightful and relevant ideas.

Silvan Tomkins was one of the most influential theorists on emotion and emotional expression. Over a period of 40 - some years - until his death in 1991 - he developed a set of original, important ideas about the nature of affect and its relationship to cognition and personality. Tomkins dealt with fundamental questions in a fresh and provocative way, establishing affect as a separate, biological system, and providing compelling data on discrete affect expressions. Several years before his death, Professor Tomkins agreed to bring his papers (unpublished and published) together into Exploring Affect for Cambridge Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction. He worked with Paul Ekman and Klaus Scherer to develop a structure for the book that would synthesize his theory of emotion. Unfortunately, he died before he was able to complete the process. Virginia Demos, who knew Professor Tomkins well, took on the enormous task of compiling the papers and writing connective material for the book. This volume of Tomkins selected writings on affect brings together his works of four decades and makes them available at a more receptive time in the field. It is a treasure trove of provocative, insightful and relevant ideas.

Tomkins' magnum opus, Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, was published by Springer Publishing Company in four volumes over 30 years. When Tomkins began writing the book in the 1950's, American psychology was dominated by psychoanalytic and behaviorist theories - neither of which placed much importance on the role of basic emotions in everyday human behavior. Tomkins challenged the status quo by developing - over the span of nearly 2,000 pages -- a theory of consciousness and motivation that placed emotion at the core of the human experience. Because so few psychologists were studying emotion at that time, Tomkins drew liberally from other academic disciplines to help formulate his ideas and support his arguments: evolutionary biology, ethology, cybernetics, literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and neurophysiology, among others. In the process, Tomkins practically invented the field of "nonverbal behavior" through close observation of emotional expressions in people, including his own infant son. His work was a brilliantly eccentric pastiche of ideas that adhered to no strict disciplinary or ideological boundaries. In time, however, AIC came to prominence through the research of his disciples, notably Paul Ekman and Carroll Izzard, who went on to become major researchers in the psychology of emotion. Today, Tomkins's book is influential not just in psychology but in philosophy, sociology, communication studies, even in "affective computing. Springer Publishing Company is pleased to continue to offer this magisterial work in four volumes.