The paper looks at B.M. Teplov's scientific ideas of natural determination of abilities, the personality approach to abilities and narrow orientation of personality, analyzing theoretical importance of B.M. Teplov's works on natural foundations of abilities and describing productive contributions of modern authors to his theory of the role of personality orientation in development of abilities. The author argues that B.M. Teplov has formulated a new approach to studying personality as a whole which exceeds the sum total of its component parts.