What is Normal?

Psychotherapists Explore the Question

Roz Carroll, Jane Ryan, Roz Carroll, Jane Ryan

• Publisher: Confer Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781913494209
• eBook ISBN:
  9781913494216
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

"This compilation of insightful, thoughtful, and highly original explorations gently subverts the concepts of normal as conventional and of what we often call 'disease' as abnormal. Written with sensitivity and compassion, it is a challenging and much needed contribution to the psychotherapeutic literature." Gabor Maté, M.D., author of When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress Many people strive to be normal, and deviation from accepted norms can feel like failure. But why do we want to be normal? And what does that mean? Ordinary? Sane? Similar? When probed, the notion of normality starts to look fragile. It is not clear who decides what being normal means or who is entitled to say. Nonetheless, concerns about conforming and being accepted are deeply pervasive. With an extraordinary diversity of perspectives, the authors featured in this collection – all psychotherapists – use biographical accounts, political analyses and clinical vignettes to challenge the concept of normality. Through these stories and discussions, it emerges that our very uniqueness, oddness and differences as individuals are what make us fully human. At a time of rapid social change, the freedom to be oneself – whatever form that takes – is at the core of contemporary debate, and this volume makes a vital contribution to that project.

Table of contents

• TITLE PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• INTRODUCTION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• CHAPTER 1: The new normal
• CHAPTER 2: Therapy and hope: are they really normal?
• CHAPTER 3: No escape from ‘normal’
• CHAPTER 4: The normal couple therapist
• CHAPTER 5: Your normal, my normal. Disruptions, accommodations and respect between therapist and patient
• CHAPTER 6: Black paranormal: a playlist
• CHAPTER 7: Normal sex
• CHAPTER 8: Minding the gap: a couple psychotherapist’s perspective
• CHAPTER 9: Born to love, driven to destroy
• CHAPTER 10: The myth of normality
• CHAPTER 11: The shifting landscape of sexual normality
• CHAPTER 12: Norms and normality: a socio-psychoanalytic approach
• CHAPTER 13: Why would I want to be normal?
• CHAPTER 14: The problem of words. It’s why we are all mad!
• CHAPTER 15: Negotiating the normal
• CHAPTER 16: Flourishing: the ‘normal’ therapist versus the ‘healthy’ therapist
• CHAPTER 17: Cultural schizophrenia and internalised racism are not normal
• CHAPTER 18: In the therapy room: are all patients normal?
• CHAPTER 19: When simply being human is abnormal
• CHAPTER 20: Future flat-packed or future fluid? Why normal is the problem
• REFERENCES
• INDEX
• COPYRIGHT