Language and Self-Transformation: A Study of the Christian Conversion Narrative

This is a study of how self-transformation may occur through the practice of reframing one's personal experience in terms of a canonical language: that is, a system of symbols that purports to explain something about human beings and the universe they live in. The Christian conversion narrative is used as the primary example here, but the approach used in this book also illuminates other practices such as psychotherapy in which people deal with emotional conflict through language.

"His [Stromberg's] transcriptions are especially valuable because they provide vivid illustration of the nature of contemporary conversions and, through the salient differences between these and the more ancient paradigms, are provocative for studies of the evolution in doctrines of conversion over the course of two millenia. Stromberg's arguments are pointedly relevant to the contemporary experiences of metanoia and, in their own ways, validate the power of those experiences to transform and to heal." Semiotica

"So painstaking and detailed is this analysis....Stromberg writes as a psychological anthropologist, but his book will be of interest to a much wider audience; any serious student of conversion will find this argument interesting." Choice

"This is an important work for those who are working with or indeed telling EHE narratives." Exceptional Human Experience