Character Defects

There is a key distinction between defects of character and the survival traits of The Laundry List. Adult children readily identify with the survival traits; however, they struggle with claiming defects of character.

This passage establishes the foundational ACA distinction between character defects — experienced as shameful and externally imposed moral judgments — and survival traits, which are owned as adaptive and identity-constitutive responses to childhood trauma.

INC , ACA WSO, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012thesis

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Within the twelve-step treatment community, these two issues are often categorized under the rubric of relapse prevention and the removal of character defects. AA and other twelve-step programs have long recognized and intuitively known that if healthy sobriety is to be achieved and maintained, it requires the alleviation, modification, or removal of personality characteristics that are incompatible with recovery.

Flores clinically situates character defect removal within late-stage addiction treatment, framing it as a necessary condition for sustained sobriety and the key target of characterological change in group psychotherapy.

Flores, Philip J, Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations An, 1997thesis

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In Step Six, we learned that willingness is the key to removing our character defects. We also learned that our survival traits from childhood could look like character defects; however, they had much deeper anchors and responded better to integration.

This passage articulates the ACA therapeutic split between defects requiring removal through divine agency and survival traits requiring integration, asserting that conflating the two constitutes a clinical and spiritual error.

Organization, Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service, The twelve steps of adult children steps workbook, 2007thesis

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In Step Six, we learned that willingness is the key to removing our character defects. We also learned that our survival traits from childhood could look like character defects; however, they had much deeper anchors and responded better to integration.

Parallel to the workbook text, the ACA Big Red Book reiterates the distinction between defects and survival traits, emphasizing that defects can return in new forms if divine intervention is not sought through Step Seven.

INC , ACA WSO, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012thesis

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The words of step six ‘entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character’, does not mean that all character defects will be taken away as the compulsion to drink was. The words ‘entirely ready’ emphasises the fact that this step does not deal in half measures.

McCabe applies a Jungian lens to argue that character defect removal is a gradual process of ego-deflation and humility acquisition, not a sudden supernatural erasure, aligning the Twelve Steps with the individuation process.

McCabe, Ian, Carl Jung and Alcoholics Anonymous: The Twelve Steps as a Spiritual Journey of Individuation, 2015thesis

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Part of the process of becoming entirely ready is to feel the painful consequence from my character defects. This naturally follows from admitting my wrongs, which I did in Step Five. As long as I was rationalizing and blaming others for my problems, I had no motivation to change.

This passage frames experiential suffering as the necessary motivational gateway to readiness for defect removal, linking Step Five confession to Step Six willingness through the medium of felt consequence.

INC , ACA WSO, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012thesis

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The Laundry List Traits represent the limbs while the character defects are the fruit. With recovery, we integrate many of the Laundry List traits while removing many of the defects of character.

The ACA workbook’s cover metaphor of the Laundry List Tree encodes the foundational ontological distinction between developmental survival traits and character defects as structurally different phenomena requiring different therapeutic responses.

Organization, Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service, The twelve steps of adult children steps workbook, 2007thesis

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For years, in meetings, I struggled with my survival behavior thinking it was a defect of character. In reality my survival traits were deeply rooted friends. They were no longer useful, but they had protected me.

This first-person account illustrates the clinical confusion between character defects and survival traits, demonstrating that mislabeling adaptive behaviors as moral defects prolongs suffering and impedes recovery.

Organization, Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service, The twelve steps of adult children steps workbook, 2007supporting

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I can remember how I fussed with a defect of character of jealousy for weeks. I would seem to make progress by talking about it and attending meetings, but I would see this person again and be burned up inside.

A case narrative of jealousy as a persistent defect demonstrates that character defects resist willpower alone and require sustained spiritual practice and surrender for their eventual release.

INC , ACA WSO, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012supporting

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I can remember how I fussed with a defect of character of jealousy for weeks. I would seem to make progress by talking about it and attending meetings, but I would see this person again and be burned up inside.

The workbook’s parallel narrative of jealousy as a recurring defect underscores the necessity of divine assistance in Step Seven, as ego-effort alone proves insufficient for defect removal.

Organization, Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service, The twelve steps of adult children steps workbook, 2007supporting

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Step Ten is where we can continue to integrate any left over character defects or survival skills into our emerging identity. As we learned in Step Seven, there will be residual defects and Laundry List survival tra

Step Ten is positioned as the ongoing arena for integrating residual character defects and survival traits into a coherent emerging identity, affirming that defect work is continuous rather than fully resolved in Steps Six and Seven.

Organization, Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service, The twelve steps of adult children steps workbook, 2007supporting

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On a piece of paper, before the Fifth Step begins, write ‘Sixth Step List’ at the top of the page. Then write ‘assets’ on the left-hand side of the page. On the right-hand side, write ‘defects of character’ or ‘ineffectual behaviors.’

This procedural instruction for sponsors frames character defects operationally as ‘ineffectual behaviors,’ positioning them within a structured inventory tool that pairs them explicitly against personal assets.

Organization, Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service, The twelve steps of adult children steps workbook, 2007supporting

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A ‘bad’ character could refer only to an utterly empty one, a person with no distinguishing characteristics whatsoever, innocent of qualities, a blank. If sins are your only qualities, you may be without morals, but not without character.

Hillman mounts an archetypal challenge to the moral vocabulary of defect, arguing that character is constituted by distinctive traits — including vices — and that the absence of qualities, not their presence, constitutes true characterological poverty.

Hillman, James, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, 1999supporting

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In order to make progress it is necessary to become conscious of any fears, resentments, and character flaws so as to remedy, purge, or even tolerate them. The usual way to become conscious of these fears and defects is to write them down.

McCabe frames the written moral inventory as the primary method for bringing character flaws into consciousness, aligning AA practice with the Jungian imperative of shadow confrontation as the foundation of individuation.

McCabe, Ian, Carl Jung and Alcoholics Anonymous: The Twelve Steps as a Spiritual Journey of Individuation, 2015supporting

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Character disorders are not schizophrenia. In character disorder there is hidden illness in the intact personality. Character disorders in some way and to some degree actively involve society.

Winnicott’s developmental framework distinguishes character disorder from psychosis, positioning it as a socially engaged concealment of hidden illness within an otherwise intact personality — a framing that implicitly contextualizes what recovery literature calls character defects.

Winnicott, Donald, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, 1965supporting

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Therapy of character disorder has three aims: (A) A dissection down to the illness that is hidden and that appears in the character distortion. Preparatory to this may be a period in which the individual is invited to become a patient, to become ill instead of hiding illness.

Winnicott’s therapeutic aims for character disorder — uncovering hidden illness, meeting the antisocial tendency as a signal of hope, and addressing ego distortion — provide a clinical parallel to the Twelve Step work of exposing and removing character defects.

Winnicott, Donald, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, 1965supporting

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True Humility is not humiliation; however, some adult children have humiliated themselves and found humility. Without help, our toxic shame from the past will find a way to express itself in our adult lives no matter how perfect we act.

This passage connects the spiritual prerequisite of humility to the pathological dynamic of toxic shame, arguing that without genuine humility the psychic energy underlying character defects will resurface regardless of behavioral effort.

INC , ACA WSO, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012supporting

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Defects of character: 188, 207-208, 210, 215, 220-221, 225; distinguished from Laundry List traits: 111-112, 208-209, 211; Sixth Step list: 214, 636-637

The ACA concordance entry for ‘defects of character’ signals the term’s structural centrality in the text and its systematic differentiation from Laundry List traits, with dedicated index entries for the Sixth Step list.

INC , ACA WSO, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012aside

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Good habits to make good character and therefore a good life cannot conform with Boy Scout principles. Instead the ethics will be daimonic and inscrutable, and will include the character of Elias Canetti going for his sister with an ax for the sake of words.

Hillman’s daimonic ethics implicitly subverts any fixed moral inventory of character defects, proposing instead that the soul’s calling may express itself through behaviors that violate conventional moral standards yet serve the daimon’s deeper purpose.

Hillman, James, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996aside

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