BOOK REVIEW: “The Myth of Normal,” by Gabor Maté

Hyperbole, or speaking or writing in an exaggerated way, or using fiction has become normal in contemporary life. Dr. Gabor Maté and his son Daniel Maté describe the current collective conceptualization of normalcy as deadly hyperbole in their book The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture (2022, Vintage Canada).

This most recent addition to the cannon of Gabor Maté invites readers to reimagine their understanding and awareness of the hyperbolic nature of society. The normalization of hyperbole can make noticing the exaggerated difficult. In the United States, the prohibition of transgendered people, books on Black history, the arming of school employees, and the catastrophic rise in mass shootings seem more like dystopian fiction than real life. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the threat of nuclear war, or numerous armed conflicts erupting across the African continent, all may seem like the next Blockbuster film. Something extraordinary? Yet, being closer to global nuclear war than peace is all but ignored. The Myth of Normal offers us a chance to reflect on this strange set of affairs in the context of how such blindness – and normalisation – can apply to our personal health and well-being.

Readers are invited into a series of stories in this book to illustrate the Maté perspective and the pervasiveness of traumatic normalcy. Organized into five sections and 33 chapters the intention is to mirror the template of all journeys with connection, disconnection and the journey to wholeness after woundedness; The Myth seems to have been written, at least for me, in a way that speaks to us with clarity, confidence, and fierce compassion. Compassion is antagonistically palpable throughout the book, feeling both loving and uncomfortably inspiring. The courage of the patients in the stories shared are an invitation to witness the path through the delusion of separation feeding the disastrously hyperbolic normal of society today. With skilful clarity, the authors easily access our curiosity by massaging parts of us that know “this isn’t it”:

Chronic illness-mental or physical-is to a large extent a function or feature of the way things are and not a glitch; a consequence of how we live, not a mysterious aberration……I am using “toxic culture” to characterize something even broader and more deeply rooted: the entire context of social structures, beliefs, assumptions, and values that surround us and necessarily pervade every aspect of our lives (Maté, G. & Maté, D., 2022, pg. 2-3).

We are living, say the Matés in a context that is sustained with “the spread of negativity, distrust, hostility, polarization” (pg. 3), and MISSING FIRST QUOTE MARK HAVE I PUT THEM IN THE RIGHT PLACE RIGHT HERE? “environmental pollutants, so prevalent since the dawn of the industrial age and so antagonistic to human health” (pg.3).  After orienting readers to the broad context of disconnection and traumatic toxicity in which we live, the Maté team weaves numerous stories of individuals both “typical” and “celebrity” who have suffered in the toxic culture and, in fact responded normally with the development of chronic mental and physical illness from substance and behavioral addiction, emerged with severe mental illness, or succumbed to cancer and autoimmune diseases. In the stories presented, shared with profound respect and fierce tenderness by the authors, the reader might connect to the experiences of living in toxicity.

Chapter seven begins with a critical history lesson of how we got to a space in which the mind and body seem dismembered by the western medical field and the deadly impacts of the separation to health. The story of Anita Moorjani, who recovered from terminal metastatic lymphoma by healing mind and body, much to the dismay of  of western medicine, illustrates the common deadly impact of a hyperbolic society and its hyper-responsive, overly-medicating medical industry, alongside the potentiality inherent in choosing courageous and compassionate divergence from the norm. Moorjani reflects, “My personality was such that I needed something as drastic as cancer to give me a reason to take care of myself.” (Maté, G. & Maté, D., 2022, pg.96).

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture has been integral to my inner work and efforts to understand and practice IFS from a perspective of self-energy. The book has inspired in me a sense of the healing needed of our socio-political reliance on traumatic hyperbole. I authentically root my practice in finding bridges for myself and others to escape being exiled in the myth of “normal.” One of my ancestral mentors is the late Comrade Fred Hampton who prophetically contemplated,

I often wonder, what it would have been like for me to have been born free. I often wonder where I would have gone and what would have become of me if I had known that intangible quality of life, Freedom. (Palmer, 1989)

This prophetic contemplation is gifted to us in a story from the late Jorja English Palmer in “Right On: A Friend Remembers Fred Hampton” I believe the practice of departing from our construct of normalcy is a freedom practice.

It’s the beginning of embodying the prophetic contemplation of Comrade Fred Hampton, that myself, and so many Black, Indigenous, and other deeply melaninated folks are denied in the United States.

The Matés tell the story of actor Darrell Hammond, who recalls meeting Dr. Nabil Kotbi (who is not White) about his mental health and having a “‘Hallelujah Chorus moment” with Dr. Kotbi’s healing words:

mental illness comes from somewhere very specific. It has a story, and in that story, you’re the only one that has no power. (Maté, G. & Maté, D., 2022, pg.236)

What if the hyperbolic ecology of today could heal with the eight Cs empowering each of us and all of you to rewrite the story? A story in which, this time, we too are empowered?

The authors offer a call “to seek the why before leaping” as a tether of “compassion and curiosity and understanding in action” towards, as I see it as an IFS interested party, to self-energy (Maté, G. & Maté, D., 2022, pg.385).

My healing is a practice of embodying the answer to Comrade Hampton’s query about what would life be like with freedom in it. This book is a compassionate lighthouse, gifted to the world by the authors, to this end. 

How might we pierce through delusional hyperbole and liberate ourselves from a myth of normal so that the unnormal are no longer hunted like prey by a toxic society? What might it be like to be empowered within and acting towards self and other from the same compassion that is cultivated and presented with The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture?”