Exploring Affect: The Selected Writings of Silvan S TomkinsSilvan Tomkins was one of the most influential theorists on emotion and emotional expression. Over a period of forty years until his death in 1991 he developed a set of original, important ideas about the nature of affect and its relationship to cognition and personality. Tomkins dealt with fundamental questions in a fresh and provocative way, establishing affect as a separate, biological system, and providing compelling data on discrete affect