Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment

Journalist Breslin’s fascinating debut memoir tackles the fallout from her enrollment in a psychological experiment as a child. Born in 1968 in Berkeley, Calif., to a poetry professor father and English instructor mother, Breslin sensed her mother’s resentment early on: “Instead of getting her Ph.D., my mother had gotten married... then she got pregnant... and as her career floundered, my father’s flourished.” To increase her own free time, Breslin’s mother enrolled a four-year-old Breslin in the Block Project at UC Berkeley, an experiment in which she “would be studied for the next 30 years in a groundbreaking psychological experiment that would predict who [she] would grow up to be.” What began as a preschool with specific, data-collecting criteria gave way to regular psychological evaluations through one-way mirrors and home monitoring via parental reports—all agreed upon before Breslin could even conceptualize “consent.” At 15, Breslin began to numb her adolescent emotional pain with drinking, drugs, and sex, the latter of which became the focus of her career as a journalist covering the porn industry. By the time she hit middle age and found herself stuck in an abusive marriage, Breslin began to reflect on the Block Project’s impact on her trajectory. Unpicking thorny questions about determinism and the ethics of human experimentation, Breslin attacks her subject with verve and wit, resisting woe-is-me solipsism without defanging her critiques of the study that rocked her life. It’s gripping stuff. Agent: Mollie Glick, CAA. (Nov.)