In this category [retreatism] fall some of the adaptive activities of psychotics, autists, pariahs, outcasts, vagrants, vagabonds, tramps, chronic drunkards and drug addicts.  They have relinquished culturally prescribed goals and their behavior does not accord with institutionalized norms.

Defeatism, quietism and resignation are manifested in escape mechanisms which ultimately lead him to “escape” from the requirements of the society.  It is thus an expedient which arises from continued failure to near the goal by legitimate measures and from an inability to use the illegitimate route because of internalized prohibitions, this process occurring while the supreme value of the success-goal has not yet been renounced.  The conflict is resolved by abandoning both precipitating elements, the goals and the means.  The escape is complete, the conflict is eliminated and the individual is asocialized (1968, pp. 207-208).