Ernst Kretschmer (October 8, 1888 — February 9, 1964) — German psychiatrist and psychologist, creator of the typology of temperaments based on physique.
In 1906 he began to study philosophy, world history, literature and art history in Tübingen, but after two semesters he changed his specialization and began to study medicine, first in Munich, where E. Kraepelin’s psychiatric studies had a particularly strong influence on him, then on an internship in hospital «Eppendorf» in Hamburg and in Tübingen, under R. Gaupp, under whose guidance he prepared and defended in 1914 his doctoral thesis on the topic «The development of delirium and the manic-depressive symptom complex.»
With the entry into military service, he was involved in the organization of the neurological department of the military hospital in Bad Margentheim. In 1918, he moved to Tübingen, where he worked as a Privatdozent, at which time he published his work “Sensitive Delusions of Attitude” (“Der sensitive Beziehungswahn”, B., 1918), which K. Jaspers rated as “close to brilliant «. In 1926, Kretschmer was invited as an ordinary professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Marburg. From 1946 to 1959 he worked as professor and director of the Neurological Clinic at the University of Tübingen. After the transfer of the clinic to students, Kretschmer organized his own laboratory of constitutional and labor psychology, which he led until his death.
Among his publications (there are more than 150 of them), a special place is occupied by works on the ratio of body constitution and character. In the early 20s, he experienced a special creative upsurge, and at that time his main work appeared, which brought him worldwide fame — «Body structure and character» («Körperbau und Charakter», 1921 (24. Aufl., 1964; Rus. transl. «The structure of the body and character», 2nd ed., M.-L., 1930)). Here, an examination of about 200 patients was described — based on many calculations of the ratio of body parts, Kretschmer identified the main types of body friction (clearly expressed — leptosomal, or psychosomatic, pycnic, athletic, and less certain — dysplastic). He correlated these types of constitutions with the mental illnesses described by Kraepelin — manic-depressive psychosis and schizophrenia, and it turned out that there is a certain connection: people with a picnic type of constitution are more prone to manic-depressive psychoses, and leptosomal ones are more prone to schizophrenia.
Further, he made the assumption that the same features of temperament that are leading in mental illness can be found, only with their lesser severity, in healthy individuals. The difference between illness and health, according to Kretschmer, is only quantitative: any type of temperament is characterized by psychotic, psychopathic and healthy variants of the mental warehouse. Each of the main mental (psychotic) diseases corresponds to a certain form of psychopathy (cycloid, schizoid), as well as a certain «character» (more precisely, temperament) of a healthy person (cyclothymic, schizothymic).
The most predisposed to mental illness are picnics and psychosomatics. The cyclothymic character, when exaggerated, can reach, through an already abnormal cycloid character variation, to a manic-depressive psychosis. With the schizotimic form of temperament, in case of deviation from the norm, schizoidia occurs, which transforms, with the forcing of painful symptoms, into schizophrenia.
(Note A. Augustinavichute identified Kretschmer’s terms «cyclotim» and «shizotim» with Jung’s irrationality and rationality. Later, S. Filimonov challenged her hypothesis).
Subsequently, Kretschmer identified seven temperaments, correlated with three main groups:
1. Cyclothymic, based on pyknic physique (a: hypomanic, b: synthonic, c: phlegmatic);
2. Schizothymic, based on the leptomsomal constitution (a: hyperesthetic, b: schizothymic proper, c: anesthetic);
3. Viscous temperament (viskose temperament), based on an athletic physique, as a special kind of temperament, characterized by viscosity, difficulty switching and a tendency to affective outbursts, the most prone to epileptic diseases.