"Recently I arrived at what I consider to be a dramatic new understanding of the concept of change." The quote-unironic!-is the first sentence of a 1989 Times article by Daphne Merkin, the writer whose chosen form is the personal history (her one novel, Enchantment, is about as fictional as Primary Colors, and she is the author of a memoir already). But little has changed, in tone or content, in the twenty years that have intervened between that "dramatic new understanding" and "A Journey Through Darkness," the 8000-word account of her depression that was the cover article of yesterday's New York Times magazine. READ MORE 15