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

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.