..".brilliant..."--Malcolm Gladwell, Author of Blink "The writings for which this essay is offered as a Prologue consumed him from the mid-1950s through the end of his life in 1991. Knowing it was his "lifework," Tomkins conflated "life" and "work," reifying the superstition that its completion would equal death and refusing to release for publication long-completed material. He knew the risks associated with this obsessive, neurotic behavior, and the results were as bad as predicted. The first two volumes of Affect Imagery Consciousness (AIC) were released in 1962 and 1963, Volume III in...