52 pages • 1 hour read
Gabor Maté, Daniel MatéThe Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Critical Context: Social Psychopathology, Science, and Social Critique
The Myth of Normal begins with a quote from Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society (1955) about the collective insanity of modern, capitalist society and how this reality is suppressed. Thus, at the outset, Maté situates his own work within a tradition of critiquing social psychopathology. Works within this tradition typically link individual dysfunction, especially of a psychological kind, to broader problems with society as a whole. Such texts include Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), and Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man (1964). The Myth of Normal shares with such works the idea that illness is not an isolated aberration, but the symptom of a deeper social malaise that can be traced back to a problem at the heart of Western modernity itself. For Maté, this problem resides in the tension between authenticity and attachment, and the loss of the former due to fear of losing the latter. In this way, Maté suggests that modernity has alienated us from our essential human nature and needs.
Like other works in this genre, The Myth of Normal embraces an interdisciplinary approach to its analysis and inquiry. Just as Freud, Nietzsche, and figures associated with the Frankfurt School of philosophy, like Fromm and Marcuse, combine history, psychology, philosophy, and cultural critique, so too does Maté. At the same time, he asks questions and uses these insights in ways that transcend the traditional boundaries of any one of those disciplines. What is distinctive in Maté’s case is that he does so in connection with the natural sciences and the more technical world of epidemiology. For example, Maté draws on recent research into the nature of chromosomes and the structures that protect them to suggest how social adversity, and not genetic destiny, is the main driver of disease. Likewise, The Myth of Normal places more emphasis on the individual’s role in healing than do traditional studies of social psychopathology. Whereas the latter tend to focus on ways that society should be changed, Maté suggests ways individuals can overcome trauma through their own initiative. For instance, toward the text’s end, Maté offers the outline of a program readers can pursue, which he calls “Compassionate Inquiry,” to heal from psychic wounds and repression. In this way, The Myth of Normal contains elements of the self-help genre, albeit within a sophisticated philosophical context.
Socio-Historical Context: Growing Skepticism Toward Modern Medicine
The Enlightenment spirit from which the contemporary world was born highlighted progressivism. This was the idea that under the influence of science and reason, human life and society would progressively be improved, and ills such as poverty and disease would be eradicated. While this view was shaken during the 20th century by two world wars and the possibility of nuclear war, at least in medicine, progressivism seemed to be largely vindicated. In the post-war period, antibiotics, vaccine programs, and the decoding of the human genome suggested that medical science would continue to make strides in improving the human condition. Advances in neuroscience indicated that modern medicine might be able to understand and improve our mental health as well. However, by the third decade of the 21st century, much, if not all, of this optimism regarding medicine has started to dissipate. Antibiotics are no longer as effective as they once were, the decoding of the human genome has failed to result in any substantial improvements in human health, and a whole raft of new health problems have emerged that modern medicine has been unable to resolve. These problems include the epidemics of diabetes and obesity, as well as growing numbers of auto-immune diseases and mental health issues.
The Myth of Normal arises out of a context, in 2022, in which faith in modern medicine is weakening and people are increasingly looking for new answers. Maté’s attempt to provide an alternative medical paradigm, based on a holistic view of disease and health, responds to this vital need. Throughout the text, Maté discusses instances of people who have felt let down by modern Western medicine and its institutions. Maté uses this disappointment to highlight the importance of individuals adopting a proactive attitude toward their own health and rejecting the standard passivity of the doctor-patient paradigm. In particular, Maté exhorts readers to seek personal wholeness and authenticity as a means to preventing and controlling disease. Likewise, he encourages readers to be more critical of the values of Western modernity that have organized society for so long. This call coincides with a growing skepticism toward Western progressivism overall in the 21st century. The climate crisis and growing inequality, for example, indicate that challenging progressivism in other contexts is just as timely and necessary as questioning Western medicine.
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