The growth of corruption crime and the expansion of the range of its forms actualize the need to study this phenomenon on the basis of various methodological principles. The author makes an attempt to abstract from the generally accepted interdisciplinary approach, with all its indisputability, and resorts to assessing corruption in a narrowly disciplinary psychological format. The theoretical model of corruption crime proposed by the author reveals the significance of such psychological characteristics as “the need for power”, “will” and “struggle of motives”, which receive almost no attention in modern research.