By habitually blaming others for his own indiscretions, the disturbed character resists modifying his problematic attitudes and behavior patterns.

Effective manipulation tactics simultaneously put others on the defensive while also obscuring or denying the malevolent intent of the person using them. Such tactics are particularly effective on neurotic individuals — especially those who always want to think the best of people and who strive hard to understand what would make a person behave in a problematic way.

Disordered characters engage in certain behaviors that are so “automatic” that it’s tempting to think that they do them unconsciously. Besides that, on the surface, these behaviors so closely resemble defense mechanisms at times that they can easily be misinterpreted as such.

Disordered characters don’t like to think that behavior has consequences and they certainly don’t like to examine their own motives.

It could easily be said that the principal quality that defines a character disorder is that the disturbed character neither cares enough nor thinks enough about how his patterns of behavior reflects on his character.

Neurotics are too quick to feel ashamed when they’ve fallen short and too guilty when they think they’ve done wrong. In contrast, disordered characters are disturbingly lacking in their capacity to experience even healthy levels of shame or guilt.

Neurotics want things to be good and wonderful, take it hard when things go wrong, and blame themselves for failures. Disordered characters take adversity in stride and blame everyone and everything else when their actions invite disastrous consequences.