The Myth of Normal

This is a brilliant, expansive, and inspiring examination not only of the roots of human trauma and suffering, but what might bring healing and hope to both individuals and society. There are many things to praise about this book, and others have said them better than I could attempt here. But Maté also frustrates me with an excess of exhaustive biographical (and autobiographical) examples, and goes on for too long about a topic, and when he repeats myths, oversimplifications and sometimes misleading truisms. The first two of my grievances made it a hard slog to read. At over 400 pages (excluding notes and references), and given the difficult nature of much of the subject matter, I had to challenge myself to keep going. And my last grievance is why I can’t give it the 5 stars it would probably get with tighter editing and fact-checking. Some of the generalizations he employs and some of the references he makes are of low grade quality, whether it be the so-called neural net he describes enmeshing the cardiac system, or the meaning of a Chinese phrase for “crisis”. The book is peppered with sloppy statements that just beg to be looked up and on many cases turn out to be misleading. The sad thing is that none are central to his thesis and could easily have been left out, especially since Maté himself says he deplores superficial pop science and pop psychology.