Adrian van Kaam

“Many people who come for religious counseling have lived their religion in an inauthentic way. Having heard or read about religious perfection, they started to imitate the perfect religious attitudes in their external religious behavior. Soon there came a split between their real personal inner life and the proliferation of perfect manners, customs, and devotions which they had assumed to the great delight of their excited educators. The latter, animated by the best intentions, did not realize that they were producing a number of neurotics instead of saints. The religious counselor will soon discover, if he tries to free such patients, that it is entirely threatening to them to substitute the great and splendid virtue which is not their own for the little awkward virtue which can really spring from their deepest personality.”
― Adrian van Kaam, The Art of Existential Counseling