This heralds back to Chesterton’s notion that the man who is most “true to himself” is the worst sort of person.
Self-consciousness feeds on sincerity, and both have attained cult status in America. But as Henri de Lubac reminds us, “It is not sincerity, it is Truth which frees us, because it transforms us. It tears us away from out inmost slavery. To seek sincerity above all things is perhaps, at bottom, not to want to be transformed.”
-Kathleen Norris, Acedia & Me, p.142