ABSTRACT
This chapter will focus on Silvan Tomkins’ comprehensive theory of affect. It will address why it has taken so long for his ideas to take hold, and provide a brief biography of his ideas. It will demonstrate not only how closely his theory corresponds to the recent findings in biology, infant research, and neuroscience, all of which point to affect as the essential organizing factor in human motivation and thought, but it will also demonstrate how his theory articulates the essential components of affect and its function as an urgent, general, abstract analog amplifier that causes us to care about what is happening. The function of each primary affect will be described in detail. This chapter will also present Tomkins’ polarity theory, which relates affect socialization to the wider world through ideology.
