Kretschmer was a German psychiatrist. His system of classification relied entirely on anthroposcopic inspection. He illustrated four physical and psychic types derived from his clinical observations and minimum measurements:
- 1) Pyknic: The pyknic was broad, round and fat, sturdy and stocky.
- 2) Athletic: The athletic was heavily muscled with large thorax and shoulders and narrow hips.
- 3) Asthenic: The asthenic was long, thin and linear.
- 4) Dysplastic : It denoted the incompatible mixture of different types in different parts of the body.
Later he substituted the word leptosome for asthenic.
Criticism
This system is now entirely outdated.
- a) It supposed that it was possible to classify people into separate discrete types. This assumption was widespread up to about the 1930’s. The later practitioners had to admit that most people fell in between the established and obviously fairly extreme types.
- b) It had also been criticized of limited sampling, scanty measurements, lack of indices, subjective estimates, and failure to classify data according to age, sex and social status.