cover image The Normal One: Life with a Difficult or Damaged Sibling

The Normal One: Life with a Difficult or Damaged Sibling

Jeanne Safer, PhD Safer. Free Press, $24 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-7432-1196-3

Adults who grew up with a disabled brother or sister may have been labeled the ""normal"" one. Psychotherapist Jeanne Safer addresses the premature maturity, emotional and intellectual perfectionism and deep guilt about their own health that she says many ""normal"" siblings experience in The Normal One: Life with a Difficult or Damaged Sibling. Using interviews with 60 subjects who have disabled siblings and her own experience with an emotionally ill brother, Safer sensitively documents the various challenges that siblings face and offers wise, gentle counsel for dealing with these challenges. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. (Sept.17)