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

by Gabor Maté

All young mammals play, and for critical reasons. As the neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp identified, we have a designated “PLAY” system in our brains in common with other mammals. Play is a primary engine of brain development and is also essential to the emotional maturation process. “As a species, we have evolved culturally in a large part because of our playfulness and all that it produces by way of intelligence and productivity,” James Garbarino writes.[15] And true play, Gordon Neufeld insists, is not outcome-based: the fun is in the activity, not the end result. Free play is one of the “irreducible needs” of childhood, and it’s being sacrificed to both consumerism and the digital culture. “The culture is not respecting normal developmental tasks,” the neuroscientist Stephen Porges told me. “Normal developmental tasks are to play with another person, not with an Xbox. Not to talk on a cell phone or text, but to make face-to-face interactions. All these things are neural exercises that provide resilience, creating an ability for an individual to regulate their internal emotional states.”