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

by Gabor Maté

This desperate drive to seize some command at least of their own body amid turmoil is almost universal among people with anorexia or bulimia that I have interviewed. The psychologist Julie T. Anné, who specializes in treating eating disorders, nails it: with her clients, she says, “three lacks” are typical—lack of control, identity, and self-worth—along with a need to numb pain. “In a relational world . . . the human psyche devises a brilliant means to emotionally survive,” she told me. “In our culture, this becomes the pursuit of perfection vis-à-vis the body and self. Also known as anorexia.” And yet these deeply wounded individuals, like the bearers of every mental-emotional burden we have touched on, are all too rarely asked the key questions: Where did this come from? and What valid problem