ABSTRACT
In his lifetime Hans Eysenck was such a controversial figure that any comment on his work is bound to be touched by individual bias; even the serious academic research discussed, let alone his ventures into socially divisive topics and fringe areas of science. His ideas about personality were contentious and evoked strong opinions, even from those of us who knew and worked with him. In his 1967 book, Eysenck explained the reasoning behind his strategy of mining the experimental psychological literature for procedures, like Bidwell's ghost, for testing out his theory. Stepping briefly outside the theory itself, to consider other contributions Eysenck made to the field under review, we should not forget the enormous influence he had on the work of other psychologists, worldwide. Within Eysenck's own department, in its heyday research on his ideas was a veritable industry, pursuing almost every corner of experimental psychology for evidence of the correlates of introversion–extraversion and neuroticism.
