ABSTRACT
The path Tomkins followed for more than 50 years of professional life was an arduous one, filled with groundbreaking attempts to understand the fundamental aspects of human functioning-from that which is particular to the individual to that which is common to all individuals. He set for himself a Herculean task of understanding complex system dynamics and never wavered in his resolve to pursue this quest. In retrospect, the march was a continuous one, albeit not always a result of systematic preplanning. He was a person of wide interests who in the following of individual projects may not always have been totally aware of their relationship to each other or how they fit into the mosaic that resulted from his creative endeavors. However, in his later years the unity of the ideas became apparent to him and he battled constantly to deal with the elusive issues, both personal and intellectual, that kept him from completing the work.
