Quantum Change

Most of us, most of the time, change very gradually, bit by bit, day by day.  But it also can and does happen sometimes that people are transformed suddenly and permanently by a highly memorable experience.  This phenomenon in popular in fiction such as Dickens’ enduring Christmas Carol tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, or the Frank Capra film It’s a Wonderful Life – both tales of men changed overnight by unusual experiences.  But it also happens in real life, turning up in biography and autobiography of well-known people.

            When I began to search for psychological research on this topic, I found very little after William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, published in 1902.  There was a peculiar silence about this phenomenon – not even a name for it.  Theologians and psychologists had sometimes written about it under the name “conversion,” but transformational change is by no means limited to religious contexts.  So I set out to discover whether this is a real phenomenon to be understood.  I am convinced now that quantum change is quite real, and not really all that uncommon.

            Our study was designed just to be descriptive, to describe what happened before, during, and after these experiences.  It turned out not to be difficult to find people with such experiences, although they were surprised to learn that others had had similar experiences.  They remembered the experience vividly, and reported that it was like passing through a one-way door.  None of them claimed to have done it themselves; the normal experience was of passivity, as if being acted on from outside.  These were ordinary people from all walks of life, who were far more similar after than before the experience.

            We interviewed 55 people who, on average, had had their experience 11 years earlier.  Our first report focused on the quantitative data, the information that could readily be expressed in numbers (Miller & C’deBaca, 1994).  The real gold, however, is in the stories themselves, and it took a book to tell the story adequately (Miller & C’deBaca, 2001).  This seems for me, by far, the most fascinating, interesting and in some ways important study in my 35 year research career.

In 2004, the Journal of Clinical Psychology devoted a special issue to quantum change (Volume 60, No. 5). It contains our 10-year follow-up of the original participants, and a variety of interesting perspectives on this enduring phenomenon.

Publications on Quantum Change (in chronological order)

Miller, W. R., & C’deBaca, J. (1994).  Quantum change: Toward a psychology of transformation.  In T. Heatherton & J. Weinberger (Eds.), Can personality change? (pp. 253-280).  Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Miller, W. R., & C=de Baca, J. (2001).  Quantum change: When epiphanies and sudden insights transform ordinary lives.  New York: Guilford Press.

C=de Baca, J., & Miller, W. R. (2003).  Quantum change: Sudden transformation in the tradition of James=s Varieties.  Streams of William James, 5(1), 12-15.

Miller, W. R. (2004).  The phenomenon of quantum change. Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session, 60(5), 453-460.

Brown, S., & Miller, W. R. (2005).  Transformational change.  In W. R. Miller & H. Delaney (Eds.), Judeo-Christian perspectives on psychology: Human nature, motivation and change (pp. 167-183).  Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Brown, S., & Miller, W. R. (2005).  Transformational change.  In W. R. Miller & H. Delaney (Eds.), Judeo-Christian perspectives on psychology: Human nature, motivation and change (pp. 167-183).  Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Miller, W. R.  (2005).  Anatomy of a quantum change.  Spirituality & Health, January/February, 52-53.