Ernst Kretschmer (8 October 18888 February 1964) was a German psychiatrist who researched the human constitution and established a typology.
Life
Kretschmer was born in Wüstenrot near Heilbronn. He attended Cannstatt Gymnasium, one of the oldest Latin schools in Stuttgart area. From 1906 to 1912 he studied theology, medicine, and philosophy at the universities of Tübingen, Munich and Hamburg. From 1913 he was assistant of Robert Gaupp in Tübingen, where he received his habilitation in 1918. He continued as assistant medical director until 1926. exactly.
In 1926 he became the director of the psychiatric clinic at Marburg University.
Kretschmer was a founding member of the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy (AÄGP) which was founded on 12 January 1927. He was the president of AÄGP from 1929. In 1933 he resigned from the AÄGP for political reasons.
After he resigned from the AÄGP, he started to support the SS and signed the "Vow of allegiance of the professors of the German universities and high-schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic state." ().
From 1946 until 1959, Kretschmer was the director of the psychiatric clinic of the University of Tübingen. He died, aged 75, in Tübingen.
Scientific contributions
Persistent vegetative state and sensitive paranoia research
Kretschmer was the first to describe the persistent vegetative state which has also been called Kretschmer's syndrome. Another medical term coined after him is Kretschmer's sensitive paranoia. This classification has the merit of singling out "a type of paranoia that was unknown" prior to Kretschmer, and which "does not resemble the stereotypical image [...] of sthenic paranoia". Furthermore, between 1915 and 1921 he developed a differential diagnosis between schizophrenia and manic depression.
Types of physique
Kretschmer is also known for developing (in the first quarter of the 20th century) a classification system that can be seen as one of the earliest exponents of a constitutional (the total plan or philosophy on which something is constructed) approach. He based his classification system on four main body-types:
- a) asthenic (thin, small, weak)
- b) athletic (muscular, large–boned)
- c) pyknic (stocky, fat)
- d) dysplastic (unproportionate body)
The concept of two great psychopathological types of manic-depressive or 'circular' insanity and dementia praecox (i. e. schizophrenia) was developed by Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926).
Kretschmer associated each of his body types with certain personality traits and, in a more extreme form, with different mental disorders. He wrote that there is only a weak relation between schizophrenia and pyknic body type on the one hand, and between Circulars (with the tendency to circular type of manic-depressive psychosis) and asthenics, athletics, and dysplastics on the other.