Rating: 
Summary: Lacks balance and options
Review: "The Normal One" is a deeply personal account by a sibling that describes how having a brother or sister with special needs can deeply and sometimes traumatically impact the child without special needs.Dr. Safer uses her own story along with those of other siblings to illustrate the many ways parents can unknowingly or unintentionally cause their "normal" children to feel either invisible or ultra visible, needing to be perfect to make up for their siblings deficits. Drawing on her own background in psychotherapy, Dr. Safer is a strong believer in the power of counseling to help siblings come to terms with both their childhood issues and their family members in general. Although this book makes many valid points, I felt that it lacked two essential elements. First, I felt a need for balance. The only passing acknowledgement I saw to siblings who had a more positive experience was to dismiss them as being "in denial". Secondly, I hoped for a more extensive discussion of options at the end of the book. Dr. Safer discusses the value of therapy for healing wounds, but doesn't give any discussion to ways that parents and communities can support families so that the wounds don't occur. Many of the challenges discussed by siblings in their interviews could have been avoided by using supports widely available to today's families. The book also makes heavy use of Shakespeare's drama, The Tempest. I didn't find the comparison's particularly helpful or practical to today's families and it's made the book much less reader friendly.
Rating: 
Summary: New and True, Yet Incomplete
Review: As a sibling of a sister who was both chronically ill AND obnoxious, I appreciated the author's honesty in smashing the myth that all disabled children are saints. Having close friends with mentally ill an nonfunctional siblings, the profiles ring true. But I have a little trouble with her value system. She repeatedly holds up as the normal, successful sibling the one with the conventional career and most money or worldly success. I wonder where this would leave my uncle, who as a priest was poor all his life, in ill health, and often needed to depend on siblings, but who exuded such warmth and spirituality that no one ever felt the least bit resentful? Perhaps it's that I come from a deeply Christian family, where someone like this is not considered a failure simply because he was poor and ill. For all her over-analyzing, the author's boureoise, Jewish background that held material success and achievement above all other areas of success in life, made me wonder if, in some of these cases, it wasn't all just a matter of point of view. The tone gets strident and hysterical, and because she never interviews her patients' siblings, you never get their take on the situation. It felt very one-sided. Towards the end, the case histories blurred -- it often wasn't clear who was the really more screwed up or affected sibling. A lot of the siblings she identifies as "normal" probably appear narcissistic to those who were merely under-achieving (which again brings up the question, who is to label who underachieving? The money grubbing investment banker is superior to the marginally employed "damaged" sibling?) I know many counterparts to the families here. The "normal" high achieving person can often be delusional, manipulative and destructive. They often exacerbate damage, by grabbing control of family finances and bad mouthing the sibling identified as "damaged". But being the "golden child" herself, the author is blind to the pattern.
Rating: 
Summary: Good read
Review: As a woman with a disturbed sibling, this book had a lot to offer me. It ranks up there with the perhaps-even-greater book, Mad House, by Clea Simon, a book I've reread so many times, the pages are dog-eared.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally, someone tells the truth
Review: At last, a mental health professional finally acknowledges the siblings of the "special" one. Not only does she cut through the Hallmark card version of life with a disabled sibling, but since this book is brief, it leaves the door open for other therapists to discuss other aspects of this experience. Prior to this book, the healthcare community has been complicit in encouraging parents to put the needs of the "special" one above everyone else in the family - regardless of the mental, social and finacial devastation that this can cause. As for lumping the difficult with the truly ill, her point is that it is the parents who determine the family dynamics, and the same pathology can occur in families who simply have a difficult child, if the parents allow this child's needs to dominate family life. (I have seen this very thing in a friend's life.) I would prefer the chapter on THE TEMPEST be shorter and a more legally accurate use of the term "guardianship" and a mention of the value of a visit to an attorney who specializes in disability (and ofter elder) law - but that is a topic for another book! This has been a taboo subject for the last 30 years and any family member who didn't view life with a disabled sibling as an uplifting and edifying experience was castigated. Thank you for bringing the rest of the family out in the open
Rating:
Summary: I have been waiting for this book all my life.
Review: I agree with the author, on the basis of my own experience, that the normal sibling must have ingrained resistance to the idea that he or she could have suffered deeply or even at all, because I imagine that suffering is to any normal sibling a judgment we no longer have the capacity to make without comparison to the other -- because suffering, for us, conjures the experience not of self but of the retarded, sick, or otherwise incapacitated sibling. This problem may be inescapable, and although this is maybe presumptuous, I do believe this might account for some of the negative reviews here. The point of the book is not to say whose experience was "worse." It is to describe an experience that is little acknowledged and generally unwanted. The impulse these readers had to pick up this book is not consistent with their statements that they didn't really get hurt. Why are they reading this self-help book at all? A few of these reviews smack of an all-too-familiar sanctimoniousness, a defensiveness of the experience of the abnormal sibling against the author and the world in general. (One reader refers to Safer's "bourgeoise Jewish" childhood and talks of herself as a "Christian" with "Christian values" -- yikes!). When I first started reading this book, I was shocked that the author could talk about her brother in such bald, bold terms. But as I read further, I felt relieved that she did and realized that I needed to do so to heal. She is also full of tremendous compassion for the brother and all the other abnormal siblings, but as she says, they have their advocates. Safer tells what it's like to be in the "normal" position, with all the slings and arrows of daily life (and I mean all arrows, not just those that come from living with the abnormal sibling) and the pain they inflict constantly deflected because, after all, they could not possibly be as bad as anything suffered by the problem sibling. As a writer, I once wrote a short story based on my own experience and told it from the viewpoint of the normal one, a girl who struggled between wanting her own life and not wanting to abandon her retarded sister. A friend and colleague disliked the story, saying it wasn't an interesting viewpoint -- I should have told the story "from the viewpoint of the one who REALLY suffered." I thank Ms. Safer for unearthing a little-heard, little-valued, little-loved, and little-understood voice that I have been told to quiet for a lifetime. Her book has freed much of the suppressed reality of my own experience -- while showing me that this reality can coexist with the very real suffering my own sister no doubt experienced as well.
Rating:
Summary: I finally understand my parents
Review: I am not a 'self help' healer - but needed to understand the role my sibling's illness plays in my family and in my life. Though we are both adults, it has taken a toll on my parents and on me personally. It became especially difficult when my sibling started to require 24 hr care. I am the relief care when my parents need a break. This book gave me insight that I needed to help me reduce the frustration I felt in dealing with the circumstances at hand, and helped me acknowledge the resentment and irritation I was experiencing. It also helped me understand that I have a choice to make regarding my involvement. I appreciated that "The Normal One" didn't try to fix anything - but felt more like it provided information to help me make better choices when dealing with my family.
Rating:
Summary: This book changed my life!
Review: I am so impressed with Jeanne Safer's analysis of "the normal one" in a family where one child is disabled or damaged. Everything she says rings true in so many ways, I was amazed that she has been able to gain the insightful wisdom that she has in her own life and am grateful that she chose to share that with others to help make their lives better. I would recommend this book without reservation to those who have difficult siblings and those who don't as it gives a great deal of insight into the sibling relationship in general, which as she herself points out, has too long been untold. I think the most important thing is that she did not sentimentalize these issues and it's my opinion that the negative reviews of this book are from people who are indeed sentimentalizing the issues, exactly why the book was written. Unfortunately, for some people this book brings so much to light that they would not like to admit or deal with, that they have to deny what she's saying, as it might very well apply to them. If you want a book that will change your life if you're a "normal one" or not, buy this one!
Rating: 
Summary: Perpetuates Stereotypes of Autism, and Mixes Illnesses
Review: I am the sister of a classically autistic brother. This book mixes autism with schizophrenia so confusingly that I looked at the bibliography. Multiple articles on schizophrenia and mental illness, none on autism (although the author uses the term freely in the book) and none on mental retardation. Most classically autistic children are not violent to other people, which tipped me off to her incompetence here. Her constant labelling of violent sibling as autistic, while describing schizophrenic behavior, suggests that she confused the two. I hated this book. I was not ambivalent about helping my brother, but the author would claim I am in denial. I brought friends home, but in my culture (African American) you only bring a few friends home who you are VERY comfortable with. My friends accepted my brother. I grew up in the rural South, and most of the action in this book is in urban areas. Her dream analysis would be shot down by most researchers in mental illness today. Most fatally, Safer's whole set of ideas come from her clients in psychoanalysis, a group more prone to weakness, ambivalence, and selfishness issues than the general public. They are not a representative sample of siblings for autistic or mentally retarded people. I'd gather to say they all suffered from overly permissive parents. This book did not represent my experience at al. It merely perpetuates stereotypes of autism and retardation. Shame on Safer for her incompetent research.
Rating:
Summary: bibliotherapy for the author
Review: I found this book infuriating. The entire first chapter is basically the author feeding the reader a predigested, much too reductive analysis of her family background. She seems overly invested in her status and her perception of herself as a "sensitive" person. This permeates the entire book; it's self-referential in the extreme and seems to have been written as bibliotherapy for the author in order to make herself feel better. She also lumps together the disabled, mentally ill, and simply "obnoxious" (!!) siblings as if there is no difference in who they are and how they have an impact on their families. I do think that this is an important subject, and has needed to be addressed in nonfiction for quite some time. (Authors of fiction have gotten there first; for example, Cathi Hanauer's MY SISTER'S BONES.) Finally, and, most important: what exactly IS "normal"? Who defines it? And why is it so important to be "normal," anyway?
Rating:
Summary: Could have done without the tempest, but good anyway
Review: I found this book painfully true. I like how the author is not afraid to tell it like it actually is in the family when one is mentally ill. I admire how she can take all the emotion out of herself and write the facts of the situation about her life, it shows a strong spirit. Many of the stories and theories did not apply completely to me but a few were dead on. For a person who rarely cries and cried during reading a book, it says something right? The " Normal One" says much of what so many people are afraid to think and say aloud. I am 16 now and I'm sure this book will be one I read many more times in the future. I recommend this book to everyone, especially people who know a family such as this. It opens a window to the outside world that cannot fully comprehend the turmoil. And of course to the ones that suffer each day from a sibling being completely mad and driving us all up the wall at one time or another.
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