About this episode
Benoit Denizet-Lewis discusses personal change, identity, and the complexities of transformation in his book YOU’VE CHANGED.
Virtual Memories Show 676: Benoit Denizet-Lewis “We choose our identities based on what’s available, and those choices are not just about what is true for ourselves. We take on identities because we need a purpose.” Can people change? How continuous is identity? With YOU’VE CHANGED: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation (William Morrow), Benoit Denizet-Lewis explores the concepts of personal change and change-in-the-world, the ways we find identities and community, and the peril of changing into our parents (haha). We talk about how we define change and transformation, what happens when we think we’ve changed but the people in our lives don’t notice any difference, how his husband feared that he would change too much in the writing of the book, and how the American narrative of change equals “overcoming one’s problems.” We get into how he made his own story of change and addiction part of the book (while guarding his privacy), whether change involves finding a core self or something new, whether redemption is possible for people who committed heinous crimes, what happened the time he got scientifically tested about his…
People in this episode
Host: Gil Roth
Guest: Benoit Denizet-Lewis
Topics covered
- identity
- personal change
- self-transformation
- community
- addiction
- redemption
Keywords
- identity
- self-transformation
- personal change
- addiction
- redemption
- community
- therapy
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: YOU’VE CHANGED: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation
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