What is Normal: Psychotherapists Explore the Question

(Paperback)

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Description

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.

Reviews

Solid and scholarly with its life-affirming personal testimonies it could also help equip us with what Gramsci called optimism of will. " -- Therapy Today
A rich and at times moving compilation forces the reader to reflect on some of the unconscious beliefs and attitudes they may hold about what it really means to be normal. * The Reading Cure Podcast *
"The contributions were a helpful prompt to consider the question in the book title, and I appreciated the clinical examples offered by several writers . . . The radical approaches taken by Taylor and Carroll really spoke to the context of the books publication: increased racial awareness, heteronormativity, and the unsustainability of our current techno-capitalist system." -- Roderic London

Author Bio

Roz Carroll is a relational body psychotherapist and supervisor and teaches on the MA in Integrative Psychotherapy at The Minster Centre. She is committed to interdisciplinary dialogue and has been a regular speaker for Confer for twenty years. Jane Ryan trained as a psychotherapist at the Centre for Attachment-based Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (CAPP). After 8 years in private practice she founded Confer as a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue and to bridge the gap between schools of thought and professional communities in the field of psychotherapy.