Interview with Jeanne Safer, Ph.D., author of The Normal One: Life With A Difficult or Damaged Sibling (Delta Trade Paperbacks, New York, 2003)

Jeanne Safer, PhD, is a psychotherapist who has been in private practice for almost three decades. A supervisor and faculty member at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health and the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, Dr. Safer lectures on the inner life of men and women, has appeared on television (The Today Show, Good Morning America and as a psychological expert on The Montel Williams Show) and radio and has contributed articles to The New York Times, the Washington Post, Self, Fitness, and Cosmopolitan. She is also the author of two previous books, Beyond Motherhood: Choosing a Life Without Children, and Forgiving and Not Forgiving: Why Sometimes It's Better Not to Forgive. Both Beyond Motherhood and The Normal One were finalists in the Books for a Better Life Award for the year's best self-improvement books.

 

Who is a "Normal One"?

A "Normal One" is any person who has a brother or sister with serious mental, physical or social problems. These problems can range from disabilities like mental retardation, autism, ADD/ADHD to antisocial behavior or drug addiction or physical illness. Often the disorder is undiagnosed or undiagnosable (particularly when it is emotional,) but still significant enough to have a major impact on family life. Higher-functioning, healthy siblings are labeled by their parents, and think of themselves, as "The Normal One."

If these siblings are so normal, why do they need your book?

Normal children need attention too, but they tend to get ignored because their siblings' more overwhelming and dramatic difficulties take precedence. Parents expect them to take care of themselves, to assume responsibility for their siblings, to have no problems, and never to complain. They are told to "count your blessings," and assured that their trials will "make you stronger." As a result, they often feel invisible, guilty, ashamed and driven. I call this "the burden of normality."

What makes your book different from other books about siblings?

The Normal One is the only book for intact siblings written by a practicing psychotherapist who is a Normal One herself; I understand their psychology personally as well as professionally. My own life experience has sensitized me to the hidden struggles and to the feelings that are overlooked by siblings' families, by society, and sometimes even by therapists.

What are the most valuable insights Normal Ones and other readers will gain from your book?

Normal Ones who read this book will realize that they are not alone, that their emotions-even their forbidden ones-are natural and valid, and shared by many other siblings. They will understand how having an abnormal sibling has affected their lives and shaped their characters. They will recognize within themselves the four personality traits I name the Caliban Syndrome and learn how to combat the restrictions it imposes on them.

Every normal sibling harbors what I call "fear of contagion"-the secret anxiety that they, too, are or could become abnormal. Understanding the origins of this fear diminishes its destructive power.

How did you come to write The Normal One?

I remember the exact moment I realized that I had to write about siblings: I had just met with my agent about possible ideas for a next book, and nothing seemed right. Then, walking back to my apartment, the words of a dear friend and colleague came back to me and stopped me in my tracks: "Someday you'll have to write about your brother." I felt sick, scared and compelled, and started crying in the middle of the sidewalk. That's how I knew the time had come. I dedicated The Normal One to her.

Since I wanted to understand other siblings' experiences too, I interviewed sixty people whose brothers and sisters suffered from a wide variety of ailments and dysfunctions. Although I had known some of these people for years, we had never spoken about our siblings before; I didn't even know they had siblings. What stories they told!

What was it like to write about your brother?

Even though I wrote The Normal One in order to come to terms with my brother, I dreaded actually doing it. The autobiographical chapter, entitled "My Brother, Myself" which appears first in the book, was the last thing I wrote. My biggest fear was that I wouldn't have anything to say about him, since I have so few memories of our relationship. Why that was so was, of course, the story I had to tell. I had to face the excruciating truth, and my own shame and guilt about excluding him all those years. The night before I finally sat down to confront this suppressed part of my past, I had a nightmare about a flood in my office-a flood of feelings-that I describe and interpret in the book. That dream unlocked my memory. I wrote the entire section in six weeks, virtually non-stop.

What struck you most about the stories your subjects told?

I couldn't get them out of my mind. People told me it was such a relief to talk about thoughts and feelings nobody had ever wanted to listen to before. They carry around such a weight of sorrow, anger, responsibility, shame and anxiety-about the past, about the future and about their own ability to function. Their damaged and difficult siblings haunt them.

Here are some of them:

• A man who turned down his acceptance at medical school to "make a place" for his obsessive/compulsive brother to attend
• A woman who saw her borderline sister homeless on the street
• A woman whose paranoid brother tried to kill her
• A woman whose sister is a mute "almost twin"
• A man who cannot forgive himself for distancing himself from his drug-addict sister who then committed suicide
• A man who torments himself about whether he should care for his reclusive sister after their parents die
• A woman who had to fish her mentally ill sister out of the river
• A woman who won't marry because she believes no man will tolerate living with her retarded brother
• A woman who is the only member of her family who is not mentally ill

What was your most surprising finding?

I had no idea of the power and the reach of the sibling bond before I wrote The Normal One. When I discovered the Caliban Syndrome, the personality constellation characteristic of intact siblings, in myself, I understood what a central role it played in virtually every facet of my life. As I studied other siblings, I saw that few escape it.

How have readers responded to your book?

I am touched that The Normal One has struck a nerve for so many people, validated their experiences and given them permission to express taboo feelings. Readers tell me they feel consoled, encouraged, and understood. "Finally somebody knows, somebody's listening," one woman wrote, "you read my diary-you told the story of my life." I got a call from a woman standing in the aisle of a bookstore, weeping with recognition as she read. One reader confided that she keeps her copy in the bathroom, with her favorite passages underlined in magic marker, and reaches for it whenever she needs to encourage herself that she deserves happiness. Some readers gave the book to their parents because it said what they could never bring themselves to say aloud; they felt the book was their advocate. I have also learned that pediatricians give it to parents, and that therapists give it to patients; sometimes, patients give it to their therapists. Nothing means more to an author who is also a psychologist than to see that her work touches so many and makes a difference in their lives.

What about negative reactions?

Nothing is exempt from misinterpretation, and The Normal One upsets some people. One man called a National Public Radio program on which I was featured to accuse me of setting care of the disabled back decades by advocating institutionalizing them indiscriminantly. Another charged that I encouraged selfishness and criminal irresponsibility in healthy siblings by questioning whether they had to be their "brother's keeper" regardless of circumstances. Of course I do neither. Others objected to my use of "normal" and "damaged," although I explain in my introduction that these words reflect the authentic feelings of the siblings themselves, not my value judgments. It's always dismaying to be misunderstood, but it's inevitable when your topic evokes passionate sentiments.

How has having written The Normal One changed your life?

The experience of confronting a buried chapter of my own history, one of the hardest things I have ever done, helped me recover feelings about my brother and parts of myself that otherwise would have been lost forever. I hope it will do the same for every reader.

 

Jeanne Safer, Ph.D., lives in New York City with her husband, historian and political journalist Richard Brookhiser. Her website is: http://www.thenormalone.com