49 pages • 1 hour read
Gabor MatéIn the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Gabor Maté
Gabor Maté is a Canadian practicing as a physician in Vancouver. He is of Hungarian, Jewish descent, and his experiences of the Jewish Holocaust—in which he lost two grandparents to the death camp at Auschwitz—are one of his focal points as he talks about childhood trauma in relation to addiction.
During the writing of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Maté is the head physician at the Portland Hotel, a housing project for addicts. He chose to write the book because he has insight into the nature of addiction, childhood trauma, and obsessive personality traits. Through the book, Maté gives examples of his own addictive behaviors and contrasts them with those of the drug addicts he serves.
Maté is a compulsive shopper and a self-described workaholic. He does not see his behaviors as markedly different from those of drug addicts, although he often receives a reward for his compulsions, while addicts destroy themselves with theirs. He encourages readers to be suspicious of the so-called War on Drugs, and to think of the status of addicts as detrimental to their recovery. Maté values compassion and self-scrutiny, citing them as master values with which to gain the awareness that will lead to empathy with substance addicts.
Rae Maté
Rae is Gabor’s wife. She does not appear in the book much, but her influence is constant throughout. Maté finds that much of his self-loathing stems from the deceptions he concocts to hide his buying from Rae. She does not coddle him, but she does not treat him with contempt, either. In the book’s concluding chapters, Maté writes to caregivers directly, advocating that they care for themselves, become more self-aware, and that they do not blame themselves for the addict’s behaviors or failures. After his description, he writes of his surprise when Rae listened to his (eventual) honest description of his compulsions. She responded exactly as he encourages caregivers to—non-judgmentally, with love, and with reasonable expectations of her own role in his recovery.
Daniel Maté
Like his mother, Daniel Maté is not in the book a great deal, but he provides a useful perspective for Maté’s exploration of his own compulsions. Daniel admits that he resented his father for not spending as much time with him as he would have liked while growing up. He did not understand his father’s compulsions, and thought that he was selfish. Daniel always knew his father loved him, despite Maté’s workaholic schedule and preoccupation with his music. But he did not always feel loved, which he believes created a distance between him and his father.
In college, Daniel becomes fixated on blogging, to the detriment of his schoolwork and temporary mental stability. He learns to empathize with his father’s struggles in light of his own, just as Gabor does with his patients. Daniel promises himself that he will treat his own compulsions with good humor, and without judgment, which eventually helps his father do the same thing with his own struggles.
Daniel also provides a useful perspective into the various—almost endless—forms that behavioral addictions can take. There are many voids that lead to a sense of incompleteness; Daniel is a symbol of the many ways in which someone can try to assuage the pain caused by the vague sense that something is missing.
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