Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here for FREE ACCESS to this landmark database

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Theory & Psychology
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Web of Science (1)
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by McIlwain, D.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Special Section: Rezoning Pleasure

Drives and Affects in Personality Theory

Doris McIlwain

Macquarie University, dmcilwai{at}psy.mq.edu.au

Much contemporary psychological and psychoanalytic research embraces affects but deletes drives. Tomkins made specific place for both affects and drives in his theory, suggesting that much of interest arose from their conflict and co-assembly. This article explores why drives have been dismissed, and argues for their explanatory usefulness in an embodied science of personality. Possible advantages of Tomkins' affect theory over Freud's are discussed as a prelude to assembling (via Westen) a lean, mean, motivational model of personality development. The model combines a view of drives consonant with contemporary evidence and representative of the early Freud with a differential affect theory indebted to Silvan Tomkins. Applications of the model are explored using as case studies personality research on psychopathy and the role of shame in narcissism. The model explores the way that signature personality profiles emerge as developmental pathways are opened or closed due to affective idiosyncrasy.

Key Words: affect • affective personality dispositions • drives • Machiavellianism • narcissism • personality • psychopathy • shame

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 17, No. 4, 529-561 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354307079303
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?