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This book is for therapists and those interested in working with the mind and social and cultural aspects of society.
The premise of the book is an exploration of the diversity of people and concepts we work with today. The title is interesting. How many times have you heard or said, “There's no such thing as normal.” As if to reassure that normality is impossible. The choice of the question, “What is normal?” might appear an outdated one, but further chapters reveal this book is far from outdated. The use of a question as the book title is, perhaps, to engage the reader from the outset and encourage a thinking process or response in one's mind. The introduction tells us that the idea for this book came from a discussion at a Confer meeting. Afterwards, ten psychotherapists were asked to present their own original paper on the question from their chosen perspectives.
The book developed into an anthology of twenty chapters, all of which are written by different psychotherapists and all exploring a different concept in a contemporary setting. They cover a wide range of subjects including sexuality, lying and betrayal, technology, disability, racism, trauma, language, and culture.
It feels like the aim of the book is to increase awareness of, and sensitivity and empathy towards, the individual in today's contemporary society. I resonate most with the chapters which include clinical vignettes and/or autobiographical stories and there are plenty of those. Like you, I treat everyone in my consulting room as an individual and try very hard not to come to the session with memory, knowledge, desire, or assumption, but even with this in mind I found myself challenged at times reading this and I believe this is a sign of a good book. It will make you think and hopefully reflect. You may benefit from reading it twice or more.
With so many different concepts and chapters in the book it is impossible to review all the chapters so I have decided to give a flavour of those with which I