Reading List

Authors Like Gabor Maté

Gabor Maté was born to a Jewish family in Budapest in January 1944. When he was five months old his maternal grandparents were murdered at Auschwitz, and at about a year old his mother handed him to a stranger for more than five weeks to keep him alive; when they were reunited, he would not look at her for days. He has said that separation still shapes him. The family emigrated to Canada, and Maté taught English before qualifying as a doctor at the University of British Columbia in 1977. He spent more than twenty years in family practice and palliative care in Vancouver, then twelve as staff physician for the Portland Hotel Society in the Downtown Eastside, treating people with addictions, mental illness and HIV. The books came out of those rooms: Scattered Minds (1999) on attention deficit disorder, When the Body Says No (2003) on stress and illness, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (2008) on addiction, and The Myth of Normal (2022), written with his son Daniel. Readers come to him for one argument made with a doctor's authority and a survivor's feeling: that addiction and much chronic illness grow out of pain, usually childhood pain, and that the question to ask is not “why the addiction?” but “why the pain?” The writers below share that territory — trauma held in the body, addiction as disconnection, and what early experience does to a whole life — and several of them test his claims more strictly than he does.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Trauma · Addiction · Childhood and the body · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Gabor Maté, start with Bessel van der Kolk, whose The Body Keeps the Score makes the same case that trauma lives in the body. For addiction, read Johann Hari, who interviewed Maté in Vancouver, and Anna Lembke for the neuroscience. For childhood and illness, Nadine Burke Harris. And for the older thinker behind much of his argument about parents and children, Alice Miller.

10 authors like Gabor Maté

01
Trauma and the body · Closest match

Bessel van der Kolk

Dutch-American · b. 1943 · Psychiatrist

Van der Kolk was born in The Hague in 1943, during the German occupation, and trained as a psychiatrist in the United States, where he began studying traumatic stress in Vietnam veterans in 1978. He founded the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1982. The Body Keeps the Score (2014) gathers thirty years of that work for general readers and had spent more than 328 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list by February 2025. In 2018 the Trauma Center's parent organisation removed him as medical director, saying he had created a hostile work environment; he denied mistreating staff and sued.

The closest match on this list: the same central claim, that trauma is a state of the body and the nervous system rather than only a memory, made by a psychiatrist rather than a family doctor. Van der Kolk is more interested in the brain and in specific therapies; Maté is more interested in the whole life, and in the society around it. Read When the Body Says No and The Body Keeps the Score together and each fills the other's gaps.

— Lisanne

Every book by Bessel van der Kolk →

02
Addiction as disconnection

Johann Hari

British · b. 1979 · Journalist

Hari was born in Glasgow in 1979. Chasing the Scream (2015) is a reported history of the war on drugs that ends on the claim that the opposite of addiction is connection; Maté is one of its central interviewees, in a chapter set in Vancouver. Lost Connections (2018) takes the same approach to depression, and Stolen Focus (2022) to attention. In 2011 he admitted using other writers' material without credit in his newspaper interviews and returned his Orwell Prize, and the writer Jeremy Duns later found quotations in Chasing the Scream altered without notice.

The journalist's version of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: the same argument that isolation and pain, not the drug alone, drive severe addiction, carried from Maté's clinic out to Portugal, Mexico and the American prison system. Hari is a storyteller and a campaigner rather than a clinician, and his record means his quotations are worth checking against the sources.

— Lisanne

Every book by Johann Hari →

03
Somatic trauma therapy

Peter A. Levine

American · b. 1942 · Psychologist

Levine holds a doctorate in biophysics from Berkeley and a second in psychology, and developed Somatic Experiencing, a body-based trauma therapy. Waking the Tiger (1997, with Ann Frederick) builds it on animal behaviour: prey animals that survive an attack shake off the freeze response, and Levine argues that people get stuck in it. An Autobiography of Trauma (2024) connects the method to a sexual assault he suffered as a child.

Where Maté makes the broad case that unresolved trauma turns up as illness, Levine offers a specific method for working with it through the body. He is a practitioner more than a scientist, and his books read best as accounts of a therapy rather than proof of it — but readers who finished The Myth of Normal asking “so what do I do?” usually find more of an answer here.

— Lisanne

Every book by Peter A. Levine →

04
The clinical foundation

Judith Herman

American · b. 1942 · Psychiatrist

Herman is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Father-Daughter Incest (1981) was her first book; Trauma and Recovery (1992) set out the idea of complex trauma, caused by prolonged and repeated abuse rather than a single event, and linked domestic and sexual violence to combat trauma. Complex PTSD entered the World Health Organization's ICD-11 in 2018. Truth and Repair (2023) asks what justice survivors actually want.

The clinical classic underneath the trauma-informed field Maté writes in. Herman is drier, more rigorous and far more careful about what the evidence shows; she is also more political about who causes harm, where Maté tends to look for causes in culture at large. Read her when you want the framework without the sweep.

— Lisanne

Every book by Judith Herman →

05
The neuroscience of craving

Anna Lembke

American · b. 1967 · Psychiatrist

Lembke is professor and medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford and runs its Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. Drug Dealer, MD (2016) explains how doctors' prescribing helped drive the opioid epidemic. Dopamine Nation (2021) argues that a world of easy pleasure tips the brain's balance towards pain, and prescribes a month without the substance or the screen.

The mechanism to set beside Maté's meaning. He asks why a person needed the drug; she asks what the drug, the phone or the habit does to the brain once it is there. She is less interested in childhood and more in the environment we all live in, and her remedy is more practical. Read the two together for the fullest picture of craving.

— Lisanne

Every book by Anna Lembke →

06
Children and the developing brain

Bruce D. Perry

American · b. 1955 · Psychiatrist

Perry is a child psychiatrist and neuroscientist, a senior fellow of the ChildTrauma Academy in Houston and formerly chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog (2006, with Maia Szalavitz) tells his clinical cases with severely traumatised children as stories; What Happened to You? (2021) is a conversation with Oprah Winfrey about childhood adversity.

Maté writes about how childhood follows adults into the clinic; Perry stays with the children, and shows case by case how early neglect and fear shape a developing brain. The title of his book with Winfrey is very nearly Maté's own question — not what is wrong with you, but what happened to you.

— Lisanne
07
Childhood adversity and disease

Nadine Burke Harris

Canadian-American · b. 1975 · Paediatrician

Burke Harris was born in Vancouver in 1975 and became a paediatrician in San Francisco's Bayview Hunters Point, where she founded the Center for Youth Wellness in 2012. The Deepest Well (2018) explains the research on adverse childhood experiences and its links to heart disease, asthma and shortened lives. She was California's first Surgeon General, from 2019 to 2022.

The population-level evidence for the link Maté draws from individual patients in When the Body Says No: childhood adversity measured in the body decades later. Her book is shorter, more practical and built around screening and treatment, and more cautious in its claims, which makes it a good one to give to a sceptic.

— Lisanne

Every book by Nadine Burke Harris →

08
Trauma, race and the body

Resmaa Menakem

American · Therapist

Menakem is a Minneapolis therapist trained in somatic therapy who founded the Cultural Somatics Institute. My Grandmother's Hands (2017) argues that racism is stored in the body and passed down between generations, and reached the New York Times bestseller list in 2021. The Quaking of America followed in 2022.

Takes the idea Maté widens in The Myth of Normal — that a culture can traumatise — and applies it specifically to race in America, to Black, white and police bodies alike. It is a workbook as much as an argument, with body practices after each chapter, so it is the most hands-on book on this list.

— Lisanne

Every book by Resmaa Menakem →

09
The childhood behind it all

Alice Miller

Polish-Swiss · b. 1923 · Psychologist

Miller was born Alicja Englard in Piotrków Trybunalski in 1923 and practised as a psychoanalyst in Zürich until 1980, then broke publicly with psychoanalysis for siding with parents against children. The Drama of the Gifted Child (1979) became an international bestseller; For Your Own Good named harsh child-rearing “poisonous pedagogy”; The Body Never Lies argued that suppressed childhood suffering returns as illness. Her son Martin Miller's book The True “Drama of the Gifted Child” (2013) describes her as an emotionally neglectful mother.

The older European thinker whose themes run all through Maté: the child who learns to suppress feeling to keep a parent's love, and the body that keeps paying for it. The Body Never Lies and When the Body Says No are almost the same title for almost the same argument. Miller is more absolute and less hopeful about forgiveness; read her for the root of the idea.

— Lisanne
Every book by Alice Miller →
10
His co-author on parenting

Gordon Neufeld

Canadian · b. 1946 · Psychologist

Neufeld is a Vancouver developmental psychologist who taught at the University of British Columbia for twenty years and founded the Neufeld Institute to teach his attachment-based approach to parents, teachers and therapists. Hold On to Your Kids (2004), written with Maté, argues that children increasingly orient to their peers rather than the adults responsible for them, and that this weakens their development.

The Maté book many parents read first is half Neufeld's, and the attachment framework in it is largely his. Where Maté writes about what goes wrong when a child's needs are not met, Neufeld writes about what a parent can actually do day to day. Read him if it was the parenting chapters, not the addiction ones, that held you.

— Lisanne

Where to start if you loved Gabor Maté

If you want the same argument from a psychiatrist, read Bessel van der Kolk.

The Body Keeps the Score: trauma as a state of the body.

If you want addiction reported, read Johann Hari.

Chasing the Scream, with Maté himself in the Vancouver chapter.

If you want the evidence behind When the Body Says No, read Nadine Burke Harris.

The Deepest Well: childhood adversity, measured in adult health.

If you want the root of the idea, read Alice Miller.

The Drama of the Gifted Child, then The Body Never Lies.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Gabor Maté

Who should I read if I love Gabor Maté?

Bessel van der Kolk first: The Body Keeps the Score (2014) makes the same case that trauma is held in the body. For addiction, read Johann Hari's Chasing the Scream and Anna Lembke's Dopamine Nation. For childhood adversity and illness, read Nadine Burke Harris and Bruce Perry, and for the older roots of Maté's thinking about parents and children, Alice Miller.

What books are like In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts?

Johann Hari's Chasing the Scream (2015) is the closest: it argues that connection is the opposite of addiction and interviews Maté in Vancouver. Anna Lembke's Dopamine Nation (2021) explains the brain science of craving, and Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz's The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog (2006) shows how early trauma shapes the brains that later become vulnerable.

What books are like The Myth of Normal?

Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score (2014) covers trauma and the body, Nadine Burke Harris's The Deepest Well (2018) the link between childhood adversity and disease, and Resmaa Menakem's My Grandmother's Hands (2017) trauma carried by a whole culture. Johann Hari's Lost Connections (2018) makes a similar argument about depression.

What should I read after When the Body Says No?

Alice Miller's The Body Never Lies (2004) makes almost the same argument — that suppressed childhood feeling returns as illness — from a psychoanalyst's background. Nadine Burke Harris's The Deepest Well gives the research on adverse childhood experiences that supports part of the link.

Who wrote Hold On to Your Kids with Gabor Maté?

The Vancouver developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld. The book was published in 2004 and argues that children who orient to their peers rather than to their parents and teachers lose the attachment they need to mature.

Is Gabor Maté's work evidence-based?

Partly. His books rest mainly on clinical experience and case stories, and critics, including the psychologist Stanton Peele and the psychiatrist Vincenzo Di Nicola, have argued that he makes trauma too much the single cause of addiction and illness. In 2023 mental-health experts also criticised him for publicly diagnosing Prince Harry in a live interview. Judith Herman, Anna Lembke and Nadine Burke Harris are the writers on this list who stay closest to the research.

Does Gabor Maté have a new book?

Yes. Hello Again: A Fresh Start for Parents and Their Adult Children, written again with his son Daniel Maté, is listed by Knopf Canada for April 2027. His most recent book is The Myth of Normal (2022).

Footnotes

  1. Gabor Maté — Wikipedia
  2. About Dr. Gabor Maté — drgabormate.com
  3. Hello Again — Apple Books (Knopf Canada)
  4. Allegations of employee mistreatment roil renowned Brookline trauma center — Boston.com
  5. Johann Hari — Wikipedia
  6. Gabor Maté in Chasing the Scream — LitCharts
  7. Alice Miller (psychologist) — Wikipedia
  8. Anna Lembke — Wikipedia

List last reviewed 15 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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