The Last Normal Child: Essays on the Intersection of Kids, Culture, and Psychiatric Drugs. Lawrence H. Diller. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006, 148 pp. $39.95 (hardcover)Society often has represented a tension between being like everyone else and being unique. Although culture typically is defined by similarities between individuals, there also exists a significant aspect of difference among people: different styles, different languages, and different individual possibilities. Sameness can be comforting, but it also is synonymous with social or academic rejection. Being unique is the imperative to securing a bright and rewarding future, but there are social systems that consider some forms of uniqueness an illness that requires a diagnosis, a label, and medication. Lawrence Diller, MD, author of The Last Normal Child: Essays on the Intersection of Kids, Culture, and Psychiatric Drugs, discusses how our era of intolerance toward difference inevitably will lead to the elimination of the unique but nonetheless healthy child.Dr. Diller begins his book of essays by reminding readers of a popular television personality of 1962. Professor Brainard, the protagonist in The Absent-Minded Professor, was known for his forgetfulness, daydreaming, and genius. These characteristics, Diller asserts, are still seen in America's children. But today, the traits often result in a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Early in the first chapter of the book, the author describes a well-behaved, healthy student who was judged as having poor study habits. The student was an 8-year-old boy who read books quickly and voraciously, was not a behavior problem, and was well-liked by everyone-but his parents and teacher were concerned about the lack of homework being completed. Diller (2006) explains that to "cure" his seemingly normal patient with the same symptoms as the faulty professor, he capitulated to the request of the boy's parents and teacher, who all believed that Ritalin was necessary (pp. 3-4). Echoing the forgetfulness that made the professor so memorable, this young student is now labeled as an academic problem and is medicated to ensure complete adherence to the rigid homework guidelines of his private school.Beginning with the title of the book and continuing in the content, it is apparent that Diller is toying with the time-tested concept of normal. He suggests that the fate of being normal hangs in the balance. In a recent article, Kramer (2009) cites that in The Midtown Manhattan Study, a 1950s mental health survey, more than 80% of the respondents were reportedly not normal. Kramer explains that because "health includes awareness of conflict, subjects who express no neurotic anxiety must be also abnormal" (Kramer, 2009, p. 4). In essence, being without defect is no longer normal; to be considered normal, virtually everyone must have a condition to be diagnosed. Kramer argues that sometimes, simply having a label and a diagnosis to a proliferating problem can bring liberation. Yet, can the child whom Diller was treating for being unwilling to finish 75 multiplication problems every night really gain much from being labeled ADHD? We would argue that he would not, and we further contend that this experience is just as likely to undermine his current love of reading and his future academic exploration.According to Benjamin Wallace (2012), columnist for New York Magazine, every generation seems to have its defining psychiatric malady, confidently diagnosed from afar by armchair nonpsychiatrists. Is normal just another label that people use to excuse themselves from accountability? The presence of ADHD symptomology is often associated with the absence of effective parenting, especially with lack of attention from the father. Breggin (2008) calls this condition "dad attention deficit disorder" (DADD; pp. 267-268). Breggin also refers to a related condition, which he calls "teacher attention deficit disorder" (TADD; p. …