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

by Gabor Maté

Many others suffer secretly over the course of long and illustrious careers, as in the case of Aretha Franklin, whose sister Erma once said, “Aretha is a woman who suffers mightily but doesn’t like to show it.” Of course, she did display it to anyone with eyes to notice. The revered singer of the self-assertive anthem “Respect” had been more than disrespected in childhood and continued to suffer abuse in her adult relationships. The disconnect is achingly apparent in the stunning concert documentary Amazing Grace, filmed at a Los Angeles church in 1972. With thrilling command and depth of feeling, a thirty-year-old Aretha rattles the rafters and electrifies the crowd. The confident mask only slips when her preacher father takes the pulpit to praise his daughter’s gifts. In the presence of this emotionally cruel patriarch, she stiffens, her face a curious mix of practiced deference and involuntary dissociation, as if she’s not quite in her body—the very same body that had been channeling the divine Word and the sweet ache of longing so transcendently just minutes before. In her music this magnificent artist conjured the power and force she could not wield in her personal life. Her lot was to be legendary in a business and a culture that would rather mythologize than empathize. We avert our gaze from the pain, lest real life intrude on the magic. I will say that I am encouraged by the fact that celebrities such as Alanis Morissette, Dave Navarro, Lena Dunham, Ashley Judd, Ru...