--- title: "4 American society Quotes By Gabor Maté" description: "4 American society quotes by Gabor Maté. Plus more from Gabor Maté and more American society sayings from other authors." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3aa/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-separation-of-mind-and-body-that-inf_1029065.jpg" --- > [“The separation of mind and body that informs medical practice is also the dominant ideology in our culture. We do not often…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-separation-of-mind-and-body-that-informs-medical-practice-is-also/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3aa/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-separation-of-mind-and-body-that-inf_1029065.jpg) > [“The attachment voids experienced by immigrant children are profound. The hardworking parents are focused on supporting their families economically and, unfamiliar with…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-attachment-voids-experienced-by-immigrant-children-are-profound/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/dc3/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-attachment-voids-experienced-by-immi_1345256.jpg) > [“North American society tries to bury many problems under tons of medications, preferring to ignore the social and cultural causes of people’s…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/north-american-society-tries-to-bury-many-problems-under-tons-of/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3f1/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_north-american-society-tries-to-bury-man_1395426.png) > [“The contrasts between traditional multigenerational cultures and today's North American society are striking. In modern urbanized North America — and in other…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-contrasts-between-traditional-multigenerational-cultures-and/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f54/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-contrasts-between-traditional-multig_2580847.png) ## Other authors on American society - [ ![](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/wp-content/uploads/sms4s/authors/processed/b011/author-henry-giroux-41521.jpg) Henry Giroux 9 quotes ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/american-society/henry-giroux/) - [ ![](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/wp-content/uploads/sms4s/authors/processed/b018/author-noam-chomsky-71799.jpg) Noam Chomsky 5 quotes ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/american-society/noam-chomsky/) ## More by Gabor Maté > [“As parents who make every effort we can to raise our children in loving security, we do not need to feel more guilt than…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/as-parents-who-make-every-effort-we-can-to-raise-our-children-in/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“The fact is, we in this society are often quite removed from our own emotional reality.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-fact-is-we-in-this-society-are-often-quite-removed-from-our-own/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/shame-is-the-deepest-of-the-negative-emotions-a-feeling-we-will-do/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Many adults have not attained maturity — have not mastered being independent, self-motivated individuals capable of tending their own emotional needs and of respecting…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/many-adults-have-not-attained-maturity-have-not-mastered-being/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [Autonomy is impossible as long as one is driven by anything.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/autonomy-is-impossible-as-long-as-one-is-driven-by-anything/) [Gabor Mate](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“If a mother has eight children, there are eight mothers. This is not simply because of the fact that the mother was different in…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/if-a-mother-has-eight-children-there-are-eight-mothers-this-is-not/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Without attachment, the parent succeeds at most in cowing a child into obedience, at the price of grave damage to the relationship and to…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/without-attachment-the-parent-succeeds-at-most-in-cowing-a-child-into/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Attachment is our connection with the world. In the earliest attachment relationships, we gain or lose the ability to stay open, self-nurturing and healthy.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/attachment-is-our-connection-with-the-world-in-the-earliest/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“So what you've actually got is traumatized children. When children are traumatized that affects how they feel about themselves, which is deeply ashamed because…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/so-what-you-ve-actually-got-is-traumatized-children-when-children-are/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Even without world wars, revolutions and emigration, siblings growing up in the same home almost never share the same environment. More accurately, brothers and…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/even-without-world-wars-revolutions-and-emigration-siblings-growing/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“We think that there are people who are normal over here, and then there’s the pathological ones who have depression, anxiety, addiction or schizophrenia…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/we-think-that-there-are-people-who-are-normal-over-here-and-then/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“One cannot get much more vulnerable than to expose oneself psychologically. To share oneself with another and then be misunderstood or rejected is, for…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/one-cannot-get-much-more-vulnerable-than-to-expose-oneself/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“The areas of the cortex responsible for attention and self-regulation develop in response to the emotional interaction with the person whom we may call…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-areas-of-the-cortex-responsible-for-attention-and-self-regulation/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Peer-oriented children live in a universe of severely limited and superficial attachments. The quest for sameness being the least vulnerable way of attaching, it…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/peer-oriented-children-live-in-a-universe-of-severely-limited-and/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“The United States contains less than 5 percent of the world’s population but houses nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-united-states-contains-less-than-5-percent-of-the-world-s/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "ItemList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/american-society/gabor-mat/#itemlist", "name": "4 American society Quotes By Gabor Maté", "numberOfItems": 4, "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“The separation of mind and body that informs medical practice is also the dominant ideology in our culture. We do not often think of socio-economic structures and practices as determinants of illness or well-being. They are not usually “part of the equation.” Yet the scientific data is beyond dispute: socio-economic relationships have a profound influence on health. For example, although the media and the medical profession — inspired by pharmaceutical research — tirelessly promote the idea that next to hypertension and smoking, high cholesterol poses the greatest risk for heart disease, the evidence is that job strain is more important than all the other risk factors combined. Further, stress in general and job strain in particular are significant contributors both to high blood pressure and to elevated cholesterol levels. Economic relationships influence health because, most obviously, people with higher incomes are better able to afford healthier diets, living and working conditions and stress-reducing pursuits. Dennis Raphael, associate professor at the School of Health Policy and Management at York University in Toronto has recently published a study of the societal influences on heart disease in Canada and elsewhere. His conclusion: “One of the most important life conditions that determine whether individuals stay healthy or become ill is their income. In addition, the overall health of North American society may be more determined by the distribution of income among its members rather than the overall wealth of the society…. Many studies find that socioeconomic circumstances, rather than medical and lifestyle risk factors, are the main causes of cardiovascular disease, and that conditions during early life are especially important.” The element of control is the less obvious but equally important aspect of social and job status as a health factor. Since stress escalates as the sense of control diminishes, people who exercise greater control over their work and lives enjoy better health. This principle was demonstrated in the British Whitehall study showing that second-tier civil servants were at greater risk for heart disease than their superiors, despite nearly comparable incomes. Recognizing the multigenerational template for behaviour and for illness, and recognizing, too, the social influences that shape families and human lives, we dispense with the unhelpful and unscientific attitude of blame. Discarding blame leaves us free to move toward the necessary adoption of responsibility, a matter to be taken up when we come in the final chapters to consider healing.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-separation-of-mind-and-body-that-informs-medical-practice-is-also/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3aa/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-separation-of-mind-and-body-that-inf_1029065.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3aa/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-separation-of-mind-and-body-that-inf_1029065.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3aa/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-separation-of-mind-and-body-that-inf_1029065.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The separation of mind and body that informs medical practice is also the dominant ideology in our culture…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“The attachment voids experienced by immigrant children are profound. The hardworking parents are focused on supporting their families economically and, unfamiliar with the language and customs of their new society, they are not able to orient their children with authority or confidence. Peers are often the only people available for such children to latch on to. Thrust into a peer-oriented culture, immigrant families may quickly disintegrate. The gulf between child and parent can widen to the point that becomes unbridgeable. Parents of these children lose their dignity, their power, and their lead. Peers ultimately replace parents and gangs increasingly replace families. Again, immigration or the necessary relocation of people displaced by war or economic misery is not the problem. Transplanted to peer-driven North American society, traditional cultures succumb. We fail our immigrants because of our own societal failure to preserve the child-parent relationship. In some parts of the country one still sees families, often from Asia, join together in multigenerational groups for outings. Parents, grandparents, and even frail great-grandparents mingle, laugh, and socialize with their children and their children's offspring. Sadly, one sees this only among relatively recent immigrants. As youth become incorporated into North American society, their connections with their elders fade. They distance themselves from their families. Their icons become the artificially created and hypersexualized figures mass-marketed by Hollywood and the U.S. music industry. They rapidly become alienated from the cultures that have sustained their ancestors for generation after generation. As we observe the rapid dissolution of immigrant families under the influence of the peer-oriented society, we witness, as if on fast-forward video, the cultural meltdown we ourselves have suffered in the past half century. It would be encouraging to believe that other parts of the world will successfully resist the trend toward peer orientation. The opposite is likely to be the case as the global economy exerts its corrosive influences on traditional cultures on other continents. Problems of teenage alienation are now widely encountered in countries that have most closely followed upon the American model — Britain, Australia, and Japan. We may predict similar patterns elsewhere to result from economic changes and massive population shifts. For example, stress-related disorders are proliferating among Russian children. According to a report in the New York Times, since the collapse of the Soviet Union a little over a decade ago, nearly a third of Russia's estimated 143 million people — about 45 million — have changed residences. Peer orientation threatens to become one of the least welcome of all American cultural exports.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-attachment-voids-experienced-by-immigrant-children-are-profound/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/dc3/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-attachment-voids-experienced-by-immi_1345256.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/dc3/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-attachment-voids-experienced-by-immi_1345256.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/dc3/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-attachment-voids-experienced-by-immi_1345256.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The attachment voids experienced by immigrant children are profound. The hardworking parents are focused on…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“North American society tries to bury many problems under tons of medications, preferring to ignore the social and cultural causes of people’s stressed mental states. The long-term social consequences of massive drug intake in the treatment of depression, ADD and a host of other conditions are yet to be known. I, too, am concerned about this, even though I prescribe medications to others and continue to take one myself.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/north-american-society-tries-to-bury-many-problems-under-tons-of/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3f1/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_north-american-society-tries-to-bury-man_1395426.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3f1/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_north-american-society-tries-to-bury-man_1395426.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3f1/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_north-american-society-tries-to-bury-man_1395426.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“North American society tries to bury many problems under tons of medications, preferring to ignore the…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“The contrasts between traditional multigenerational cultures and today's North American society are striking. In modern urbanized North America — and in other industrialized countries where the American way of life has become the norm — children find themselves in attachment voids everywhere, situations in which they lack consistent and deep connection with nurturing adults. There are many factors promoting this trend. One result of economic changes since the Second World War is that children are placed early, sometimes soon after birth, in situations where they spend much of the day in one another's company. Most of their contact is with other children, not with the significant adults in their lives. They spend much less time bonding with parents and adults. As they grow older, the process only accelerates. Society has generated economic pressure for both parents to work outside the home when children are very young, but it has made little provision for the satisfaction of children's needs for emotional nourishment. Surprising though it may seem, early childhood educators, teachers, and psychologists — to say nothing of physicians and psychiatrists—are seldom taught about attachment.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-contrasts-between-traditional-multigenerational-cultures-and/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f54/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-contrasts-between-traditional-multig_2580847.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f54/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-contrasts-between-traditional-multig_2580847.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f54/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-contrasts-between-traditional-multig_2580847.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The contrasts between traditional multigenerational cultures and today's North American society are…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } } ] }, { "@type": "CollectionPage", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/american-society/gabor-mat/#webpage", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/american-society/gabor-mat/", "name": "American society Quotes by Gabor Maté", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website" }, "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/american-society/gabor-mat/#itemlist" }, "primaryImageOfPage": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3aa/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-separation-of-mind-and-body-that-inf_1029065.jpg" }, "description": "4 American society quotes by Gabor Maté. 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