Abstract
This article presents an analysis of adaptive and transcendental components of the motivation of achievement in patients with mental disorders. The presented author's model of the motivation of achievement reveals that, in the norm, a person has both components of that model with a temporary predominance or with equal representation of one of them in the human motivational-semantic sphere. With mental pathology, either the extreme manifestation of one of the trends is possible, or an extremely weak representation of both trends. During the course of empirical research which was aimed to identify and analyse the adoptive and transcendental components of the motivation of achievement in psychopathology three additional categories were added to existing key categories of subjects stories analysis on the basis of pictures used in Hekhauzen test. These categories are: “realistic-unrealistic goal setting”; “productive-unproductive instrumental activity aimed at achieving the goal”; “target in the past”.