Your past does not decide you

The book is a dialogue over five nights between a philosopher and a troubled young man, and it explains the ideas of the psychologist Alfred Adler. The youth arrives convinced that people cannot change. The philosopher disagrees.

Adler rejects the idea that past trauma decides who we are. Instead of asking what caused our behaviour, he asks what purpose it serves. A person who never leaves their room, the philosopher suggests, may be creating anxiety so that they do not have to go out. Even anger is often a tool we use to get our way. We are shaped not by our experiences but by the meaning we give them.