Definition of "inner-directed" [inner-directed]

• Guided in thought and behavior by one's own set of values rather than societal standards or norms. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• ""Cheney's quiet, inner-directed motivation is simply impervious to the attacks orchestrated against him by the Chicago machine-style politicians at the White House, a fact also plainly visible to his fellow citizens," Bolton adds."
• ""Cheney's quiet, inner-directed motivation is simply impervious to the attacks ...""
• "Thus, esteemed critics such as James Wood point us back to Henry James or Virginia Woolf as writers who set a standard of inner-directed realism, a realism of the mind and its subjective perceptions rather than a realism of the material world presented as a collection of facts."