Find Out Who's Normal and Who's Not by David Lieberman

This book was on my Amazon recommend list one day. The title intrigued me. I read some brief reviews and looked at his other books. This author was clearly a behaviorist, or even better a cognitive-behaviorist. I bought the book so that it could perhaps help me to understand and help others. However, I was in for a shock when I discovered it gave me more insights into my own personality and how I have dealt with my life's issues, than it did for any other purpose. He focused a lot on the notion of self esteem, that is, true self esteem, not the false self esteem which has been promoted in the last 30 years or so. He also pointed out that most kinds of emotional instability is related to low self esteem and as such, leads to defense mechanisms which seek to compensate for low self worth. Typically, this manifests itself in three ways, the first is the person who is a people pleaser. By pleasing everyone, the positive feedback of thanks boosts up self esteem artificially and temporarily. Secondly, the arrogant person boasts about his accomplishments in areas where he is confident, to offset his feelings of inadequacy in other areas. And thirdly, the person who runs away from challenges because of his fear of lowered self esteem due to failure or rejection. Sometimes a person is more predominant in one of the three, but in reality, most of us float amongst all of them depending on the situation. The author then gives techniques on how to determine whether a person is normal or not. He warns that these are not infallible methods, but it certainly gives one a good idea of others' emotional stability. Great book.

Laurence G.
11/29/10

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