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.
Summary
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BetaPart 4, Chapters 22-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary: “The Assaulted Sense of Self”
Maté talks about growing up as a Jewish boy in Hungary in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the antisemitic racism he endured. This experience has allowed Maté to sympathize with racism suffered by African Americans in the US and Indigenous peoples in Canada. He borrows the term “biological embedding” (312) from Canadian physician Clyde Hertzman to explain how our social circumstances and experience of race and social status effect our development and biology. As such, this chapter looks at how race and socioeconomic status influence our health by becoming biologically embedded. Maté explains how this question relates to the concept of “intersectionality” (313) or how different elements of our identity, principally race, gender, sexuality and socioeconomic status, interconnect to determine our opportunities in life and how others perceive us.
Looking at the issue of race, Maté argues that to be subject to racism is equivalent to having “an assaulted sense of self” (315) since one is being defined and constrained by another's conception. Such forms of racism, and the attack on the self they represent, have detrimental health effects on those subjected to them. For example, “Black people in the United States suffer more diabetes, obesity, and hypertension, along with life-threatening complications such as strokes, for which their risk is doubled” (317). Likewise, statistics show there is a big gap between the life expectancy and health outcomes for the poorest people in the US and Canada in comparison to the richest.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Society’s Shock Absorbers”
Chapter 23 addresses the question as to why women “suffer chronic illness of the body far more often than men,” as well as being “far more likely to be diagnosed with mental health conditions” (329). For example, women are more likely to suffer from migraines, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, and auto-immune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. The explanation behind these statistics, argues Maté, is that women are more disadvantaged within contemporary society in both overt and covert ways than men. The core reason behind this disadvantage, suggests Maté, is that our society suppresses female attempts to express their authentic selves.
Another part of the reason that women are disadvantaged in this society and suffer trauma comes from the fact that girls are more likely than boys to be sexually abused as children. Relatedly, women and girls suffer more from the threat of sexual harassment. This harassment is especially prevalent in traditionally male-dominated professions, such as policing or firefighting. Women suppressing anger at such treatment leads to increased incidences of auto-immune diseases and other chronic health issues.
Chapter 24 Summary: “We Feel Their Pain”
Maté looks at the world of politics and suggests that recent political discourse, especially in the US, creates stress for citizens and leads to health problems. Contemporary politics is a world of continual and toxic conflict: Maté cites research showing that overexposure to politics shortens the length of chromosome-preserving telomeres. Meanwhile, the effects of news and our subjection to it are exacerbated by smart phones and social media technology, which allow us to access it constantly.
Maté argues that trauma goes to the very heart of contemporary politics. Within our society, there is a vicious cycle of politicians who succeed because of their lack of empathy, caused by childhood traumatization, and who then impose traumatizing policies on their constituents. Such populations, inured and normalized to trauma, in turn become acclimatized to selecting only politicians who seem traumatized and are without empathy.
Chapters 22-24 Analysis
Maté is right to suggest that “the assaulted sense of self” (316) felt by disadvantaged groups in Western society does not necessarily occur on the level of overt discrimination. Explicit racism, sexism, and classism do still occur. Nevertheless, the negative effects of belonging to marginalized groups are often felt in ways that are both deeper and more ubiquitous than those of any specific discriminatory remark or action. For example, as Maté says, quoting author of Indigenous Canadian descent Helen Knott, “[Y]ou’re always aware of your otherness within a room” (315). Being outside the dominant white culture, Knott, like those from other marginalized groups, internalized at a young age her “otherness” along with objectifying stereotypes and a sense of deficiency. In short, she “absorbed other people’s view” (311) of her.
There can be feelings of anxiety for people like Knott within public, white-dominated spaces, even when the people there are all well-intentioned. As she says, the question “do I make myself less visible or more visible” (315), haunts her even as an adult and someone now proud of her heritage. The oppressive prison of objectification continues to function well beyond her conscious rejection of its confines.
Objectification can occur even when the individuals subjected to it are “sold the seductive idea that there is empowerment in it” (335). Maté argues that this often takes place with the contemporary objectification of women. Especially within 21st-century capitalism, women are encouraged to view the sexualization of their bodies and the use of this for profit as a source of power and liberation. They are encouraged to believe that they are “‘empowering’ themselves” (336) when they are socialized to view this sexualization as their own free choice. This is facilitated by social media platforms and businesses like “OnlyFans,” which both reflect and exploit this ideology and the practice of self-objectification.
While Maté largely ignores this point, it is fruitful to link capitalism and commercialism to objectification based on economic status. How we are seen by others in this society is often, whether explicitly acknowledged or not, a factor of our wealth and status. Encouraged by aggressive, pervasive brand marketing, we are taught to identify worth with the products we can afford to buy and display. For example, the possession of a certain kind of car or brand of clothes will create a specific image of who someone is. Thus, we consent, on a societal level, to self-objectification sold as choice. This self-objectification can create stress, especially for the economically marginalized, for as they must constantly strive to live up to this image, if they fail to achieve it, they can be negatively objectified as being unworthy or unsuccessful.
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