A review by brogan7
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté

challenging informative slow-paced

2.0

Disappointing reading.  Maté has a lot to say on a variety of topics(childbirth , child-rearing, trauma, the mind-body connection, capitalism and social ills that are not incidental but integral to it)--but he seems caught up in a culture of death-defiance and delusion when it comes to people with chronic illness and cancer, essentially arguing that people can clear themselves of conditions without medical intervention, just by the way they think about their healing.  This is dangerous and frankly cruel, as a doctor and as a public figure, to dangle that out there as though people who die of cancer are just failing in their attitudes, and implicitly suggesting to people that quitting conventional treatment can lead to miraculous outcomes.

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