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Gurometer: Gabor Maté (Patreon)

Published:
2024-08-29 09:00:14
Edited:
2024-08-29 09:25:55
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

We process our decoding trauma with the aid of the Gurometer and see where Gabor fits in the Guru Pantheon. Also, some responses to feedback and a discussion at the end on questions of authenticity.

Files

Comments

Sean Atkinson

Introduction repeats at very start! Looking forward to listening to the rest of the episode...

Sean Atkinson

Thanks that was fast. Might remember you next time I have concerns about IT trouble, low bank balance, or world peace.

Exai

Shedler's "Where Is the Evidence for 'Evidence-Based' Therapy?" is a standard response against cognitivist framings of therapy being a solved (now, even worthless!) practice, where the task of the ideal clinician is to reproduce manualized treatments for RCTs, with patients & patient outcomes mostly valued as data points. But even if that were the mission statement (of course, this isn't a fair assessment of even most CBT), it's exactly the frankly miserable evidentiary record of "evidence-based" approaches, even when the tests are basically designed for the chosen winner, which should raise alarms that we're doing something wrong! Maté (who's not Freudian or psychoanalytic, by the way, so it's strange you keep saying he is!) may be annoying and New Agey and overplay his hand. He's still more of a scientist in his specialty than podcasters vibing on vague science feelings. Citation practices are more lacking here, even when something is looked up; usually annoying-sounding studies are dismissed offhand without reading anything. Such expressions of science-belief disguised as scientific critical thinking are pseudoscientific exactly as we might recognize in some of our gurus! Who, here, is speaking for science? This isn't meant as some ringing endorsement of Maté, but perhaps this falsity could tell us a little bit about why when a CBT practitioner, master of evidence-based therapy, goes to a therapist, they usually seek out a psychodynamic one. Yeah, there's my soapbox! The McCarthyist side of cognitive psychology is to me what philosophy is to the pod, so these clinic-adjacent episodes are when it gets a bit painful.

Dave the Rave

In the myth of normal he quotes a film he made called the wisdom of trauma, which, to be fair you can get for free as it's a donate what you can system. In the film he quotes capatilism as part of the problem perpetuating trauma. Since I signed up for that I received multiple promotional emails of Maté's courses on something called sand (science and non duality) which is some new age vibe subscription service. All this to say I think he definitely does a fair amount of profiteering.

Demostix

A minor quibble, prestera sure psychoanalysis dont have a great deal of evidence behind it. There however newer psychodynamic treatments that so say ISTDP for example.

Demostix

I also don't get how you go from the article you linked criticizing ESTs to the dodo bird hypothesizing being debunked. This is also the first time I'm hearing of it

Andy

I would like to see you guys define the difference between someone wanting to share the experience and perspective they feel they've gained through a long life experience in a specific area of study, and a guru. Honestly, the evidence in the Mate episode felt a bit thin. I've loved your podcast, but I can't help but feeling like you've been huffing your own farts a bit too much lately. I would invite you both to make more of an effort to steelman your subjects' points of view FIRST, in addition to providing your critiques.

charlie

I listened to Mate’s interview with the CEO guy and then Matt and Chris’ show, which I really enjoyed. I also read The Myth of Normal, Mate’s latest book. At the time of reading (about a year ago) I was excited about getting new insights into something or other, but I found myself constantly fighting the author. I’m pleased to have listened to this decoding because it makes me feel vindicated. I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with almost everything Matt and Chris have to say. I followed him for a while on Instagram and saw him repeatedly hammering away at the same message, often with wide-eyed people reverently looking up at him. At one point, he even took to sitting cross-legged on an important-looking cushion. I have a question for like-minded cynical folk. I’m having a late-in-life career change and am due to start a counselling and psychotherapy course next month. I volunteer with the Samaritans in the UK and see the value in connecting with people. I do, however, have a bullshit radar that goes off quite a lot around talking therapy, particularly when a scientific moniker, or neuroscience of this or that, is casually picked up and put down. How does one reconcile a sense of cynicism about magical, unproven therapies while believing there is value in talking to a trained professional about troubling thoughts and feelings? The short answer is I’ll find out. But I’m interested in knowing others’ thoughts.

Roland Weber

Thanks, that was interesting! 😃 Are you going to release the initial section on the public feed, so that everyone can listen to your responses to the feedback? Also, I couldn't help observing... on a scale from 1 to 5, the middle is not 2.5. 😉

Linda Sears

It seems to me that one way in which it is difficult to know if a form of treatment works or not is that a person could be doing better for a while and then relapses. Does this mean that the treatment was effective because, for some time at least, the person was doing better? Or is the treatment deemed ineffective since it didn’t last?

Neely McCormick

I agree with your assessment. As a person who experienced extreme abuse as a child, I am personally believe and have been professionally diagnosed with PTSD. I know very few folks who can relate to my experiences. That being said, I drives me berserk when I hear about being at the effect of, shall I say, bad parenting, and how that “trauma” determined unsatisfactory lives as adults. Life itself is not trauma and when everyone is traumatized it gives the impression that we are all playing on a level field. Not so! So go find your “authentic” selves and stop “processing” yourselves like you need to learn to walk again. Sorry. And guys, if I hear “authentic selves” again…..

Janice L Kirsch

I've been wondering about Gabor Mate and thank you for this interesting examination. In his book, When the Body Says No, he mentions Gilda Radner's ovarian cancer being due to her personality, especially her tendency to perfectionism, whereas she may well have had the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genetic predisposition to the disease. He also claims that Lou Gehrig's meticulous hard work caused his ALS. Modern epidemiology reveals that athletes AND all those who do physical labor seem to have higher rates of ALS, but the causative factor is likely exposure to toxins (e.g. athletes are chronically exposed to pesticides used on playing fields). Basically, he's pushing very poor theories of disease causation to fit his hypothesis. Jan Kirsch, M.D., M.P.H.

Paul Bowman

I think this article in today's Guardian is an example of how egregious Maté's "one-shtick pony" approach to socail phenomena, that everything boil's down to early-life trauma, can get - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/06/authoritarianism-roots-origin Trump? Hitler? Nazism? All to do with early-life trauma, according to Maté. First of all, a single-cause explanation that explains everything, by the same token explains nothing. It's not an analysis, it's a "bit" that you riff off for any particular subject. It's the universal explanation that's a combo of galaxy-brained and revolutionary theory. Second, more troublingly, a relatively serious paper is publishing an article in which Nazism is stripped of all ideological content, including racism and antisemitism. This is the egregious bit - if you start saying understanding antisemitism isn't part of understanding Nazism, then what the hell are you at?

Kelly 🇮🇪 🇦🇺

So the reason I found the pod was bc I was looking for some skeptisim on GM. My teacher is obsessed with him and it was getting to me. I spent Years working with trauma narrative and all the wellness crap (not all bad) along with theapry. It worked okay but until I started ssris and got diagnosed adhd (irony) it makes way more sense of things. Including how parents were because its hereditary. So I was heavily skeptic of the teacher constantly refresing his trauma narrative. Great take. Ps he is not a psychologist. He was an MD and then worked with AOD. AND he is selling courses Professional Online Training Program – Compassionate Inquiry https://share.google/KDxYuif1QwNryHYQA