ABSTRACT
I have to say right at the beginning that it was with some diffidence that I agreed to present the ‘predominantly negative’ view of Eysenck’s work in this debate about his contribution to personality theory. The reason is that I have always considered myself as veering more towards the sympathetic than towards the antipathetic pole of the love-hateEysenck dimension; and, as I shall try to show in this paper, my criticisms of Eysenck often reduce to differences of detail, emphasis, intepretation, experimental strategy and opinion about future directions, rather than amounting to fundamental disagreement with the broad style of his approach to personality. But perhaps I delude myself. Some years ago, at a symposium where Eysenck and I shared the floor as discussants, we were both asked to respond to a question about some point or other relating personality to drug effects. We disagreed and I recall that Eysenck, in his reply, commented with his usual dry humour that ‘Dr Claridge has made something of a profession out of criticizing my theory.’ So it is at the risk of reinforcing this image as an Eysenck ‘hit man’ (at least in the eyes of the recipient) that I offer this critical evaluation of his work.
