Character Disorder: "While individuation is an important developmental step and always involves resistance to authority and pressures to conformity, the character disorder adult has become fixated ar this developmental level and is stuck, more or less, in a posture of exaggerated rebelliousness and anti-authoritarian, aggressive acting out. People who are variably called sociopaths, antisocial personalities, oppositional disorders, conduct disorders, and the like fall into this broad category. They are the ones who are most likely to be at odds with the rules, regulations, and laws that most people live by and, hence, the ones most likely to end up doing criminal acts and being sent to jail or prison. "

Another major defense is the suppression or repression of conscience. Conscience, after all, is the internalized voice of authority and demand for conformity, and this is what the character disorder individual is always trying to overthrow. When conscience is defensively dulled down or deadened, the character disorder's impulses have freer rein. He tends not to concern himself very much with considerations of what has gone on in the past, nor is he very attentive to likely future consequences. Guilt resides too much in the past, and anxiety and apprehension stake too strong a claim in the future. The character disorder, therefore, lives almost wholly in the here and the now. It is the present moment that matters most to him. People who do not profit from past mistakes or alter their behavior in light of probable future consequences are, of course, at very high risk of repeating behavior that society abhors and punishes.