Rereading Tomkins on ideology took me back over a path I have traversed for almost a half century. I can still recall that first course I took with him in 1947. We were both newly arrived in Princeton, he as an associate professor, I as a graduate student. The course was entitled Theory of Personality, which I thought was unusually vague. What were we going to discuss? How to construct a theory? Some particularly desirable theory? Many theories? Tomkins's theory? As I soon learned, and what I found to be characteristic of the man, all the above and more. It was a mind-opening experience, an enchanting journey to a faraway place that you might someday reach. But never mind, the beauty of the experience was really contained in the multiple affects produced by the search. I can readily visualize him exploring a new thought. The excitement he projected was contagious. He made you feel wonderful about your ability to think.

In all the years we were friends and colleagues, the image never changed. All our discussions, which were numerous, about the abstract as well as the personal, began with an embarkation. We were going somewhere but how we would get there was not quite known. Describing this recalls to mind an illustration he used in a seminar he offered on the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) a year or so after we met.