You’ve Changed: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation

The urge to remake oneself—through therapy, religious conversion, or otherwise—is probed in this colorful deep dive into personal change. Journalist Denizet-Lewis (Travels with Casey) pursues many offbeat examples of self-reinvention, among them a schoolyard bully who grew up to be a Buddhist monk and learned to detach from his aggressive impulses; an obstreperous octogenarian—she threatened to stab Denizet-Lewis during an interview—who underwent hypnosis to curb her outbursts; and convicted murderers who used a mix of repentance and therapy-speak to convince the California parole board that they were new men. Denizet-Lewis also chronicles his own efforts to cure his sex addiction with the aid of questionable therapists—one urged him to attach pictures of his parents to a punching bag and pummel them—and magic mushrooms, and recalls mystical epiphanies that did or did not change his life. Denizet-Lewis attributes the rising obsession with self-transformation partly to today’s climate of “collective anxiety, ideological whiplash, and the uneasy sense that everything has simultaneously changed too fast and not nearly enough.” Beneath that, he writes, is a universal desire for change that’s as “messy and convoluted” as it is irresistible. (“Change is scary,” he writes, “not only because it scrambles instinct and routine, but also because we can’t predict where it will lead or end.”) Combining shrewd analysis and evocative reportage, this offers an entertaining and insightful take on humanity’s unappeasable drive to be different. Readers will be riveted. (Apr.)