[Doctrine of psychopathy typology: E. Kretschmer's concept of 'key experience' and inherited defect]

The author analyzes the first concept of E. Kretschmer which preceded his famous concept of cycloid and schizoid temperaments: specific 'root' or 'key' experience characteristic of the personality type. This concept was built on the clinical data of patients with delusions but E. Kretschmer assumed that the difference in the degree of disease was not essential ('neurosis of reference' and 'sensitive delusion of reference' were more close than 'sensitive delusion of reference' and 'expansive delusion'). For a sensitive psychopath, the key and specific experience is 'shameful defeat', for expansive psychopath - 'the violence over will by the common will'. Explanations of the phenomenon of psychopathic personalities made by E. Kraepelin and E. Kretschmer are compared as well as the relationship of psychopathic types determined by E. Kretschmer to 'the general psychopathic constitution'.