Repairing the Deformed Self

Growth in loving God repairs the deformed self. The point is not that a proper understanding of self leads to finding God but that a proper understanding of God is the only way to come (gradually) to a purified self--that is, a happy self. 

 --Ellen Charry, exegeting Augustine's thought, in By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (Oxford University Press, 1999), 131