[Regulation of the activity of psychopathic personalities by meaningful (motivational) goals].

An experimental-psychological study of the regulation of perceptive activity involved 20 psychopathic patients with excitable and hysteric manifestations and 20 mentally normal subjects. It was established that motivational orientations in normal subjects regulate manifestations of aims and determine such phenomena as "perceptive protection" and "perceptive readiness". In psychopathic patients motivational orientations and aims of activity function automatically and the activity of recognition is not regulated by orientations related to motives of activity. The results obtained reflect a poorly formed and unstable hierarchy of motivational formations in excitable and hysteric psychopaths.