The first writings pertaining to a science of spirituality, what is called Formative Spirituality, appear to be within van Kaam's Catholic writings. It is in a 1975 discussion of Catholic spirituality that the idea of a human spirituality is first introduced. In order to explicate the foundations of Catholic spirituality, van Kaam would necessarily have to articulate a generalizable spirituality of which Catholic spirituality would be a particular instance. Or, as he put it, human spirituality would be a subset of Catholic spirituality.
Van Kaam is struck by the fact of religio-spiritual discourse. Religious traditions present an image or conception of the human as spiritual. This image "...suggests to us what the spiritual nature of man and mankind is; the dynamics of its development; its influence on the other dimensions of human personality and society; and the conditions for its wholesome growth." And yet, we today are also confronted by the development of the various human sciences, such as psychology, that also put forth an image of, and add to our understanding of the human. Van Kaam does not want to throw out the traditional religious statements concerning human being, nor does he want to set up a dichotomy between the traditional-religious and contemporary-scientific statements about the human. Rather, he seeks a system by means of which he will be able to reinterpret the traditional views in light of the contemporary findings.
Van Kaam really does something rather surprising and unique. He attempts to broaden our understanding of the term "spirituality" out of an exclusively religious realm of discourse. At the same time he challenges the scientific realm to integrate traditional religious discourse into its oeuvre. He writes: "The various arts and sciences and their subdivisions may deal indirectly with the isolated profiles of their spiritual life." Traditional religio-spiritual discourse may thus shed light on our understanding of the arts and sciences as expressions of the spirit and vice versa. Traditional religious discourse does in fact identify, address and discuss an aspect of human reality: that which is distinctive about the human, that is, human spirituality. This same reality, as peculiarly human, will necessarily show forth in the peculiarly human activities of the arts and sciences.
In a 1980 addition to an earlier work van Kaam begins to subordinate his interest in specifically Catholic spirituality to his quest for an articulation of general human spirituality and identifies a new field of inquiry: "Foundational Formative Spirituality". It is here that van Kaam first identifies some of the comprehensive concepts-- gained from religious traditions and/or the arts and sciences-- that would form the basis for this new discipline. He acknowledges that terminology compatible with the Judeo-Christian traditions has been used in the development of Formative Spirituality. However, "...this science of spiritual formation is not necessarily bound to any specific humanistic or religious formation tradition, such as the existential, Buddhist, Islamic or Christian formation traditions."
The dissertation of one of van Kaam's proteges,