Origin of 'the new normal' as a freestanding phrase

My theory is that "the new normal" in use after 9/11 is a figurative extension of a therapeutic term referring to how grieving survivors handle the loss of a loved one. From an article in Psychology Today in 2010:

The phrase "the New Normal" is a term from the ‘grief and recovery' world that I've surprised myself by taking to heart. I don't take easily to slogans. If you come at me with something along the lines of "it's all good," I promise you I will snarl. (It's not all good. Some things are less than good. Other things are just okay. Iceberg lettuce, for example, or that brown blouse I thought I liked.) I do, however, feel right at home with diagnostic language, along with family oddities like, "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a streetcar." Hence, my fondness for the phrase, "New Normal."

Note that the publisher of the earliest book title cited in the question, The New Normal: How FDNY Firefighters are Rising to the Challenge of Life After September 11, is Counseling Service Unit of the FDNY, 2002.

The FDNY Foundation website describes the "Counseling Service Unit" in an article:

“The mental health of our members is of the utmost importance,” said Captain Frank Leto, the Deputy Director of the FDNY Counseling Services Unit. “Being in this department for 32 years, I know firefighters and EMTs respond to the most dangerous situations, but if they’re having a problem in their family or emotionally, that’s what can stop them in their tracks. We have to make sure that everyone is operating at their optimum level.”

In other words, this early publication with "The New Normal" in the title was published by a unit dedicated to mental health, that would have been familiar with the therapeutic term described in the Psychology Today article above, and the senses in which it was used prior to 9/11 as outlined below.

Many of the uses I found prior to 9/11 fit directly into this sense, and it doesn't seem far-fetched that the sense would lend itself to figurative extension as in "the nation is grieving," hence the explosion in use post-9/11.

Here are a few uses that appeared shortly before 2001.

She said it is her aim to turn those "co-victims" into people who can live in their "new 'normal.' You know you can't go back," to life before the murder, she said. "But that doesn't mean you can't be OK. There will be a new normal. There will be a new life."

• 2000 - Asbury Park Press (Asbury Park, NJ) 9 July AA3/4

Moving backward, there is this use from 1999 that describes its own context:

Those whose loved ones have died will never get back to what Klug calls "the old normal," that is, the way things used to be. "It's a process of moving to 'the new normal,'" he says. The new normal means new habits, new routines.

• 1999 - Iowa City Press-Citizen (Iowa City, IA) 30 Sep. 3C/5

Another example is from 1996 in the U.K.

The counselors talk about something called a "new normal". The aim for survivors and relatives, they say, should not be to avoid the experience of last April but to minimise the extent to which it disrupts their lives.

• 1996 - The Guardian (London) 18 April 3/2

Because of the frequency of pre-9/11 uses relating specifically to grieving for lost loved ones, with only occasional one-off uses that are unrelated to grief, my hypothesis is that this term from the Psychology community was adopted to describe the mass-grief of a country following a shocking loss.

I don't have an earlier date, but a Mr. Hurd, writing in the NYT used it three times in one article,

'LA GUARDIA INSISTS FEDERAL AID GO ON; Halt Next Year 'Unthinkable,' He Says, Calling for New Funds by Next Congress."

Here is a partial quotation, courtesy of BYU's COHAE:

With technological displacement, with labor-saving devices in agriculture as well as in industry, we must be prepared to meet this new normal, which means that with a complete recovery of business and industry we will still have several million employable men and women unable to find gainful, permanent employment. There is no question about that. "Now, then, it takes time to adjust or to make the necessary adjustment to meet this new normal."