The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

The Myth of Normal is a 2022 work of psychology, medicine, and social critique by Gabor Maté, a Canadian Hungarian author and physician, co-authored with Maté's son, Daniel. The book investigates why Western nations have seen a rise in health problems, such as diabetes and auto-immune diseases, despite the vast resources invested in their healthcare systems. Maté addresses this question by looking at the nature of Western culture, medicine, and childcare. He argues that the culture of materialism and individualism rooted in capitalist, industrial modernity has caused excess stress and trauma and has led to a rise in illness. Finally, Maté looks at how such illness can be countered on an individual and societal level. He argues that we can restore the interpersonal connections and authenticity that have been lost in modern culture by cultivating essential human qualities.

This guide uses the 2022 Vermilion edition of the text.

Summary

The Myth of Normal is divided into 33 chapters and an Introduction, and five parts. In Part 1, Maté asks why, despite the advances of modern medicine, health in the West is deteriorating. His answer is that we live in a toxic culture with illness-inducing factors, such as social isolation and excess stress. Modern medicine typically ignores these factors due to a paradigm that treats the body in isolation from other facets of human existence. As such, a new paradigm is needed that explores the connections between our health, minds, and the socio-political contexts. Maté argues that disease should not be viewed as external to our self and body; rather, it should be seen as an expression of tensions within the self. The fundamental sources of this tension are the needs for social attachment and self-expression. Prioritization of the former and suppression of the latter can cause conditions like cancer and auto immune diseases.

In Part 2, Maté discusses the connection between essential human needs and childhood. He argues that we have an innate need for connection with others derived from our earlier existence in small hunter-gatherer tribes. However, this need is often thwarted by our culture, as babies and children are taught to see love and connection as conditional based on behavior rather than unconditional.

Maté also discusses the ways in which childhood development is undermined by modern culture. He argues that although human beings have an innate aptitude to raise children, this skill has been suppressed by our culture, which prioritizes economic functioning. The absence of parents from children’s lives due to work has also undermined natural parent-child attachments.

In Part 3, Maté examines The Logic of Addiction in 21st-Century Capitalism. He argues that the two predominant ways of viewing addiction, as either a consequence of “bad choices” or as a “disease,” are mistaken. The former ignores the powerful pull of addiction, while the disease theory ignores the importance of life events and a person's social context. Instead, we should see addiction as a complex process underpinned by the desire to escape trauma. Maté criticizes the concept of “mental illness,” which dominates modern medicine’s thinking about psychological distress. He argues that this concept reduces such distress to a physiological problem with the brain, ignoring the way in which these symptoms reflect personal context. Rather, “mental illness” should be understood as an adaptation of the mind to otherwise intolerable emotional circumstances.

In Part 4, Maté discusses the effects of society overall on the health of human beings. He says that capitalism, the economic structure defining 21st-century society, is injurious to human health by increasing people's levels of stress. It does this by fostering insecurity and by dislocating us from meaningful connections with others. Maté also discusses the ways in which different forms of discrimination affect health outcomes. He looks at how Black people in the US have suffered increased stress and occurrence of health problems due to racism, and how women suffer from mental health problems due to the sexism.

In Part 5, he argues that we can start healing from the effects of modern culture by cultivating the four qualities of authenticity, agency, healthy anger, and self-acceptance. Maté suggests that although illness can be a prompt to pursue these qualities, we can achieve self-awareness and healing before the onset of illness by undertaking a daily process of introspection. Maté examines psychedelic drugs and how they can promote healing, and speculates about what kind of healthier type of society might replace the current one. Maté says that he has no blueprint on these points. However, the possibility of change must be based on the principles of individual and societal self-inquiry and compassion outlined in the text.