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Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté
6 reviews
noonanjohnc's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Abandonment, Cancer, Deportation, Infertility, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Ableism, Medical content, Mental illness, Pandemic/Epidemic, Addiction, Child death, Child abuse, Classism, Colonisation, Death, Grief, Panic attacks/disorders, Chronic illness, Death of parent, and Confinement
katsmedialibrary's review against another edition
Dislike. This book did some things well (or at least better than others like it) but was a long slog and didn’t tell me that much new information I didn’t already know about trauma and health and capitalism.
Despite presenting itself as a compassionate take on trauma etc, the book repeatedly used ableist, fatphobic, and offensive slurs. Like you’re a book on trauma but you’re still saying “committing suicide”? Get out of here.
Content warning for fatphobic discussion of “the obesity epidemic” in children and adults and ableist slurs like “stupid” as well.
Despite presenting itself as a compassionate take on trauma etc, the book repeatedly used ableist, fatphobic, and offensive slurs. Like you’re a book on trauma but you’re still saying “committing suicide”? Get out of here.
Content warning for fatphobic discussion of “the obesity epidemic” in children and adults and ableist slurs like “stupid” as well.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia, Child abuse, and Ableism
Moderate: Rape
emmawall's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Mental illness, Terminal illness, Medical trauma, Medical content, and Panic attacks/disorders
Moderate: Eating disorder, Forced institutionalization, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Sexual violence, Death, Drug use, Pandemic/Epidemic, Suicide, Chronic illness, Grief, Cancer, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, and War
bluejayreads's review against another edition
I have read a LOT about trauma and its effects over the past few years (e.g. here, here, here, and here). This is a topic of personal interest for me, as well as one where, at this point, I feel fairly well-versed. From the emphasis on the back cover, I thought this was going to be about the many small and not-so-small traumas we face every day because of how society is set up (the “toxic society” promised in the subtitle) and how those affect our health. I expected something more along the lines of Sedated than anything.
I’m going to refer to author in the singular here because even though the book tries to emphasize that Daniel also had a large hand in the writing of the book, the concepts and ideas are obviously all Gabor’s.
The main premise of The Myth of Normal is that modern medicine’s fundamental assumptions about human health are wrong – that the mind and body are not and can never be truly separated, and that trying to treat illness as separate from the person’s life circumstances is short-sighted and misses essential underlying factors that affect a disease’s onset, progression, and treatment. All of which I do agree with. However, for all its emphasis on challenging fundamental assumptions, the book itself refuses to challenge or even acknowledge the fundamental assumptions that drive it:
- There exists a state of perfect health which is possible for humans to achieve;
- Achieving this state is both possible and essential for every human being;
- Therefore, the ultimate goal (or one of the ultimate goals) of every human being should be to work to achieve this state.
To be fair, Gabor is a doctor and likely doesn’t realize he is making those assumptions. These are underlying assumptions of our society as well – just look at any health, diet, or weight loss claim. Once you know to look for them, you’ll see these assumptions everywhere. So I don’t really blame Gabor for writing from that perspective. It’s great that he’s on board with the growing body of evidence about trauma’s effects on physical health. I think he just didn’t go far enough in the “challenging society’s assumptions about health” aspect.
There is a lot of research presented here, so I do give him credit for that. It’s not really anything I didn’t get from The Body Keeps the Score (Gabor even quotes Bessel van der Kolk several times), but if you’re not familiar with the concepts and the research, I think it would be a good introduction. Where I had issues was all the parts that weren’t research. The anecdotes and stories were incredibly sensationalized. It was always someone with a horrible and fatal disease going from being bed-bound to living a pretty much normal life due to healing from horrific childhood sexual abuse. Nobody was healing from schoolyard bullying or their parents’ divorce and as a result seeing improvement in their back pain or having fewer headaches. It was always people with something dramatic and incurable who healed their trauma and therefore fixed their disease.
As someone who is disabled/chronically ill, I’ve heard all of the “one weird trick to heal your incurable disease! Doctors are amazed!” stuff. And if you strip away the scientific trappings, what Gabor is presenting sounds exactly like the “natural cure without drugs!” bullshit you find in weird alternative health circles. Take out the fact that Gabor is a doctor and cut the parts where he cites research and you could replace “trauma healing” with “kale,” “yoga,” “unpronounceable exotic herb,” or whatever else in every single anecdote and it would sound exactly as outlandish. Gabor is pretty much promising that healing your trauma will fix anything and everything wrong with you, up to and including incurable and fatal conditions.
I don’t want to deny the fact that there is research. Unlike most “cures” in this non-medical modes of healing space, the trauma-health connection actually has a lot of promising research around it. Which I think is why I take such issue with the way it’s presented here. Could healing your trauma help your physical health? Absolutely, and there’s research to back that up. Will healing your trauma cure your cancer? I can’t bring myself to believe that, no matter how fancy the credentials of the doctor telling me the story.
This book may have fallen prey to the whims of marketing, ignoring scientific nuance in favor of something that will sell – and sensationalism sells. Or maybe Gabor completely believes in trauma healing as a miracle cure. I don’t know. But regardless, I don’t recommend this one. The concepts and research are good, but you can get the same information in other books (I recommend The Body Keeps the Score and It Didn’t Start With You) with many fewer issues. The effects of trauma on physical health are worth learning about. But not from this book.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Abandonment, Chronic illness, Rape, Domestic abuse, Cancer, Pedophilia, Child abuse, Terminal illness, and Incest
Minor: War
meganpbell's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
A must read for fans of The Body Keeps the Score and anyone interested in the science and literature of trauma (should be us all!), The Myth of Normal is a moving, groundbreaking, and holistic exploration of just how sick “normal” is, the connection between the mind, personality, experiences, culture and the body, and ways to move forward and heal. I wish it was even more inclusive than it was, but I found it eye-opening, affirming, and crucial.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Medical content, Addiction, Death, Abandonment, Antisemitism, Body horror, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Mental illness, Self harm, Cancer, Chronic illness, Classism, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Misogyny, Sexism, Genocide, Medical trauma, War, Pregnancy, Racism, and Terminal illness
rly's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
Content Warnings
Minor: Child abuse, Drug abuse, Addiction, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Grief, Sexual assault, Suicide, Drug use, War, Violence, Terminal illness, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Racism, Racial slurs, and Pedophilia
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