Metamorphosis: How and Why We Change

by Polly Morland

The world is in transition. We are in transition. Change - and the desire for change - is everywhere you look. Yet we scarcely understand change, let alone know how to pursue and steer it wisely.

This book offers an intimate view of how, why and when we change. Can we make it happen when we want to? How do we deal with it when we have no choice? We are faced with political change, we find ourselves divorcing, made redundant or bereaved. We long to lose weight, to move somewhere new or to mend a bad habit. However it comes about, Polly Morland shows that change is not an event, but an evolving process at which we are far more skilled than we realise.

Appealing to anyone who is stuck in a rut or who wants to think afresh about change in a turbulent world, Metamorphosis brings psychology and philosophy to it is about why real people change, and how our imaginations can drive that transformation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology

256 pages, Hardcover

Published May 19, 2016

Reviews

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a series of short stories about people who have changed and why they have changed. I didn't enjoy the first couple of chapters, but from the 3rd story onwards this book was great, some really good and interesting stories. Change is clearly a well researched subject for the author and there's philosophy and modern theories dotted in between the stories which really add to them. Another great thing the author does is callback to previous stories in later stories where there is a comparison to be made. My only gripe from the book/author is the descriptive setting the scene of the discussion with each quote. I may be alone in that gripe, some people may love it and it helps them visualise the actual discussion taking place, but I just found it distracted from the actual quote and it happens on virtually every single quote as if the author is trying to get the word count up. Overall I really enjoyed the book.

[Peter Geyer · Rating 1 out of 5]

What do you look for in a book? What makes you take it off the shelf in a bookshop and spend money on it? When considering buying this book, I noted its physical similarity to a number of recent purchases i.e. small white-jacketed hardback 200 or so pages and wonder whether that was the factor that put it over the top as a purchase ( I bought another similarly-shaped book at the same time).

I have to admit that I think the word "change" has been overused and misinterpreted for decades, and "How and Why" is more than a little too certain. On the other hand, people like Sebastian Junger and Hilary Mantel are mentioned regarding an earlier book of Worland's.

Page 133 opens 2/3 of the way down with "The psychological study of religious conversion has chiefly (although not exclusively) focused on the American Protestant experience, yielding various not entirely surprising models of how this particular vein of change takes place" This eminently plausible statement was of great interest to me and so I wanted to read about that.

However I didn't look closer (a personal foible) and disn't come to the realisation that the statement stood by itself, unexamined and unelaborated on, as far as i was concerned. Later on, there's a few sketchy lines about Jung, not entirely accurate, and there are throwaway lines from Freud, Bandura Coue, Kahneman, Hume that tell you this is ultimately pretty light on.

Morland's project is to tell you, from interviews, about people who have changed i.e. gone from something to another, and her first example, of a classical musician who became a policeman is actually interesting. It doesn't really go well from there, and this might be due to the author's somewhat stodgy style, as well as growing reservations about whether she has anything really insightful to say.

I ended up scanning through the book quickly after the first 40 or so pages, stopping here or there to see whether something would grab my attention, but there wasn't. Maybe I'd already decided that.

The one star is for the story about the musician which was interesting a;most despite the prose, and the comment about religious conversion, which is still of interest. I'm not sure whether the old saying "you can't judge a book by its cover" actually holds, despite all this. Maybe it's a triumph for the graphic designer. I'll be handing it on to someone (anyone), anyway.

[Jeanie Blyth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this; much food for thought. As someone who thrives on change but finds the process challenging, I found the reference to research by Festinger and Carlsmith really helpful, much more help than a lot of self help books.

[anoudi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stopping at page 129 because it’s really, really not worth my time. I tried in every way to continue reading, but it’s so useless.

[Nicola · Rating 4 out of 5]

incredible stories, research packed into entertaining accounts of people's transformations, on my list to read again <3

[Tom Frost · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but not revelationary. Nice to see Paul Aveyard and the BWell trial in there as I'm working on a programme inspired by that research.

[Vinash Gopalakrishnan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally provides snippets of short stories on evolution of change. Very brief touch points on theories and ideas without much depth. Overall the book feels like a summary note of connecting different ideas without any concrete substance.