Adrian van Kaam

Adrian van Kaam, C.S.Sp. (April 19, 1920 – November 17, 2007) was a Dutch Catholic priest in the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, a professor, existentialist psychologist, writer on formative spirituality and founder of the Institute of Formative Spirituality at Duquesne University. He also founded the institute's successor, the Epiphany Association of Pittsburgh.

Life Van Kaam was born in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1920. He joined the minor seminary of the Holy Ghost Fathers in Weert at the age of 12, professing his vows on August 29, 1940.

He was at major seminary in Gemert in 1940, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. While on retreat in the western Netherlands in 1944, Van Kaam was trapped behind Nazi front lines following Operation Market Garden. He hid in a barn while enduring the "hunger winter" of 1944, during which the Dutch were forced to subsist on turnips, potatoes and toxic tulip bulbs, an experience that had a permanent deleterious effect on his health. Van Kaam became a seminary professor, his health being too frail to allow him a life as a missionary. He led a series of classes on faith for young adults with the assistance of a Belgian mentor, Maria Schouwenaars. Van Kaam returned to his background in spiritual direction in 1963. He received an honorary Doctorate of Christian Letters from the Franciscan University of Steubenville in 1994.

Van Kaam retired to the Spiritan priests' retirement home in Bethel Park in 2004. He died on November 17, 2007, in the nursing home of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Pittsburgh's North Side, and was buried in Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Peters Township, Pennsylvania.

Works Van Kaam is the author of about thirty books and hundreds of articles. His early works were aimed specifically towards Catholics and psychologists and focused on typically Catholic subjects and a critique of contemporary psychological theories. In the 1970s and 80s, however, Van Kaam began to explore a "science of spirituality," which led to a voluminous series entitled Formative Spirituality.