Beyond Structure: In Search of Functional Models of Psychological Process

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Abstract
Silvan Tomldns [1962] once remarked that it seemed to him that human personality was “organized as a language is organized, with elements of varying degrees of complexity–from letters, words, phrases, and sentences to styles–and with a set of rules of combination which enable the generation of both endless novelty and the very high order of redundancy which we call style.” He went on to note that “if we had to be blind about one or the other of these types of components, we should sacrifice the elements for the rules,” although “factor analysis appears to have made the opposite decision. It would tell what letters, or words, or phrases, or even styles were invariant and characteristic of a personality or of a number of personalities,” but by itself it does not and cannot “generate the rules of combination which together with the elements constitute personality” [Tomkins, 1962, p. 287].