This article was originally published in Optimist Magazine, November/December 2024.
The auditorium is at his feet. On the stage a youthful eighty-year-old man, speaking calmly yet compellingly, while moving lightly across the platform. Gabor Maté, a phenomenon. The night before, he stood before a sold-out Ahoy, a 4.500 seat venue in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His vision of the human condition and its mental challenges resonates. An international trauma expert, bestselling author, and speaker, originally a Hungarian-Canadian doctor, born as a Jewish boy in the penultimate year of the Holocaust, 1944.
He’s speaking to a sold-out Antropia, where three hundred influencers in the fields of lifestyle, medicine, and mental health have paid €200 per ticket for A Day with Gabor Maté. By invitation only. I’m a few minutes late and slip into one of the last empty seats in the back row during the opening words of the day’s host, Hilde Bolt, a trauma expert originally trained as a psychologist and psychotherapist. Maté is one of her greatest inspirations, and she has immersed herself in Compassionate Inquiry, his approach to guiding people with mental trauma. An approach that also demands critical self-reflection from the therapist.
To part of the audience, he’s a guru in the original sense of the word: a teacher. But his status as a Guru—omniscient, mystical healer—which I also pick up from the crowd, triggers my critical mind. Still, his honesty is overwhelming. Within a few sentences, I understand why he effortlessly sells out Ahoy. Humor, self-deprecation, addressing the core of an issue directly. I’m wedged between two influencers: a businessman—self-proclaimed very wealthy—and a psychotherapist who’s now only half in the mental healthcare system. Everywhere I see open faces, inviting me to step into their worlds. I speak to a few, each one a passionate individual you’d love to get to know better. If only there were time.
Wisdom, insights, and sweeping perspectives on human nature come at a rapid pace. The three hour-long sessions fly by, interspersed with short breaks, music from cellist Anastasia Feruleva, and a movement class by Andrew Peter Greenwood.
Maté: The mind takes the lead, according to Buddha. If your mind is shaped by rejection and fear, you’ll come to see the world as a lonely, dog-eat-dog place. For Gabor, nature is central—the way humans were shaped over thousands of years of evolution before "civilization" emerged. That biology determines human needs, especially the needs of a child. Connection to a father, a mother, a caregiver, the community. Not primarily attachment to peers or a computer screen instead of primary caregivers. Unconditional love. Rest without guilt. Freedom of expression, but without destructive behavior. Play in nature. A mind shaped by this sees the world very differently—full of love, connection, strength, and mystery.
The unnaturalness—actually toxicity—of modern Western urban culture regarding pregnancy, birth, and childhood has a lasting impact on our minds. Indigenous peoples can show us the way to a healthier life—without abandoning the blessings of Western civilization. Maté has delved into the indigenous peoples of Canada, where unity with nature is a given. Where children are breastfed until age three or four and are part of the community.
The audience is personally addressed when it comes to the word children learn to say in their second year: no. It’s important because, without no, yes has no meaning. It’s the essence of freedom: the freedom to say no. For a child, no is the fence protecting their from the overwhelming power of their parents, their environment. According to Gabor, people who can’t say no get sick more quickly. We’re given an exercise: for four minutes, we hold a monologue with a stranger about saying no. When has saying no been difficult in your life, and how did it feel? What were the consequences? I realize I’m in this room purely because I said no at a certain point. The same turns out to be true, in a very different way, for the woman next to me. I suspect it’s the case for almost everyone here.
Back to Maté. The intellect isn’t that intelligent, he claims. But why? Why, for instance, do smart doctors make such dumb decisions? According to Maté, it’s because they don’t see the whole person. A show of hands reveals about 10% of the room are doctors. He finds doctors his toughest audience—too indoctrinated and stressed to be open to his view of health. Many doctors see the patient as an organ, not a person. How often does a doctor ask about a patient’s well-being? About childhood traumas, relationships with themselves and others, with work? A show of hands from those who’ve visited a medical specialist reveals: almost no doctors ask. That social and psychological factors are at least as important as physical and molecular ones was already stated in 1939 by the famous doctor Soma Weiss. This seems to have vanished into a Bermuda Triangle of information: insights that end up there never return. But the doctors present here are open, part of a growing group of healthcare providers who’ve escaped the mainstream, stressed, hierarchical, money-and-pill-driven system. Growing, yes, but according to Gabor, that growth is painfully slow.
Still, this day is a catalyst for such change—from the grassroots up. Put 300 influencers together, inspired by someone like Gabor Maté, and a network explosion happens. I feel privileged to have been part of it. And my critical mind? Yes, on the details. I think Maté romanticizes indigenous peoples too much. I know of accounts from Seram and New Guinea describing cruelty and abuse among indigenous groups. And I detect a liberal bias that manifests in somewhat gratuitous Trump-bashing. But Hillary Clinton doesn’t fare much better. And when I ask whether transgenderism should be seen as destructive behavior or freedom of expression, I find him a bit too cautious. He acknowledges there’s “something” in the culture encouraging transgenderism among youth today, but I miss a sharper analysis. I’d love to discuss this further with him, but after his final session, he’s gone—literally—off to his next gig in Sarajevo, Bucharest, or Budapest. A youthful eighty-year-old, on a mission.
Witnessed: A Day with Gabor Maté. Antropia, Driebergen, September 13, 2024. A film about Gabor Maté is Wisdom of Trauma, available on YouTube. Due to the success of this film, there’s now a series, The Eternal Song, focusing on the wisdom of indigenous peoples.
I occasionally work with the homeless in Tokyo, so I read "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" a few years ago. Well worth the time. His son has turned out to be a good journalist.