ABSTRACT
The severing of autonomy from responsibility in the area of will might be restored with an account of autonomy which linked it more intimately with mental health by distinguishing developmental patterns which result in neurotic/psychotic individuals through a distortion of the self in its thrust for personal integration from patterns which produce healthy and integrated persons. The importance of character and related concepts may be seen by noting an asymmetry in the account of moral responsibility. From the point of view of freedom and moral responsibility, peoples' failure to characterize autonomy carefully may not be a serious deficiency. There is a difference between a man who develops murderous impulses as the result of the appearance of the full moon and one whose impulses develop out of the paranoid structure of his own personality; but it matters little to his moral responsibility.
