Normal or not would be a hard thing to ascertain, as there's a fair range, some approaches being more helpful to certain people and at certain times than others. Given that, all I can really offer is personal experience, followed by a few thoughts.

Current one's approach: She is very easy-going and we tend to talk over a wide range one session to another (once in awhile not obvious in their connection to psych stuff). It's actually quite perceptive of her. There are soooo many entangled and long-standing issues for me, and having soooo very many years that they were unadressed, it's not as if focusing over and over on any given thing is particularly useful, as the others then run amok. Also, she realizes that I am very cagey, have a lot of well-established walls and have a lot of trouble talking fully about anything. So she takes what she can get out of me, pushing only moderately, knowing full well I'd only retreat further, which would not be good. It helps build trust in knowing she will not push me over, knowing full well I'm already at my limits. The "pushing" tends to be in terms of a question. She knows I will think and write about it b/w appts. She sometimes will send me home with a book to read, knowing it may raise stuff that I am otherwise too overwhelmed to even recognize. About half the time, I return not having been able to focus enough to read, and she knows I really can't (because when I do, I really do! Pages and pages of notes, lol). Perhaps another time. I realized this "don't push too hard" approach worked when one session, I realized I'd told her things I'd never told anyone (sui-related). Not everything, but one small wall of very disturbing stuff. Weirder yet was that I brought it up! At the moment, I was wanting to get off a subject that had been discussed too much, and only very peripheral to what was really going on. Later realized at some level I must have realized that it was only fair to her to admit the giant pink elephant overshadowing and coloring everything else.

All this(!) is to say that it's quite different than a T I had a few years ago. She was CBT oriented (didn't know what it was at the time, but now recognize it) and always gave concrete homework. In this point in time, the current model (ie. less structured) works better for me.

Not quite sure what to make of the paper you mention. Do you think maybe she's thinking you should be the one to direct/re-direct the conversation to the psych stuff? Do you remember how it got off to the knitting? If you initiated it, maybe she thinks it was some kind of avoidance??? (Though "aloof" would be a strange word to use.) I hear you on the frustration of being told you're doing well with something when you really feel you're not. A matter of conveying it maybe? I'm sorry that it doesn't seem (but are you really really sure?) that T's can be changed. It seems frustrating advice to have to offer, but any chance you can take charge topic-wise a bit more? Either in initiation or re-directing? Or even asking for homework? It's unfair to put the onus on you, but if it were to work, the sessions might seem more what you would like them to be. What do you think?