Think About It 111: GABOR MATÉ

 

In a social sense, we have really lost the way. There are certain human needs that are not negotiable. We can’t negotiate them away. We can give up on them, but then we suffer when we do. When they’re not met, there’s going to be suffering and ill health in every sense of the word. They include having a purpose in life, having agency and authority in one’s own life, and being connected to other people. Meeting all of these needs is required for full health, full wholeness. On a social level, that means that all the institutions and political structures and ideologies that undermine those qualities need to be either jettisoned or transformed.

      Both the Left and the Right have got these traumatic imprints that they enact. The Right very often consists of abused people who identify with power so they’ll never be hurt again. That’s basically it. You know, like a Trump. Big Daddy will protect me so that I’ll never be hurt again, like I was hurt by my real daddy. And they hate vulnerability. They attack vulnerable people because they hate their own vulnerability. So that’s the thumbnail traumatic imprint of people on the Right very often.

      People on the Left, on the other hand, also suffered in their childhoods, and they take that anger that’s not resolved in them and they project it into the politics, which makes them not very tolerant and much less effective. When they talk to people who just don’t see it their way, who are not aware or maybe more ignorant, or not in touch with the real issues, there’s a tendency to speak in a very hostile and very demeaning way. That’s unresolved trauma on the part of the people coming from the Left… Self work, particularly for people who want to make a difference, is really important. To the degree that people don’t do it, they might attract some followers with a certain degree of charisma, but they will not convince anybody that doesn’t already see it their way.

 

Interview [Jacobin, 13 October 2022]

 

 

 

Use the link below to read the interview with Canadian physician and psychologist GABOR MATÉ:

 

 

https://jacobin.com/2022/10/gabor-mate-capitalist-society-physically-mentally-unwell-trauma

 

 

 

 

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