M. Scott Peck, M.D., in The Road Less Traveled, tells us:

The process of actively clinging to an outmoded view of reality is the basis for much mental illness. Psychiatrists refer to it as transference, that set of ways of perceiving and responding to the world which is developed in childhood and which is usually entirely appropriate to the childhood environment (indeed, often life-saving) but which is inappropriately transferred into the adult environment.

One of the most difficult things for me to do was to accept that those who are unable or unwilling to change will not grow. Not rethinking behavior that which was integral to our survival years ago condemns us to the lot of Sisyphus.