A solid, well-researched, and well-argued analysis of the behavior of plastic surgery patients.
A plastic surgeon presents insights into patients’ motivations based on his practice and empirical research.
In this medical book, Constantian (Rhinoplasty, 2009) analyzes patients who have undergone multiple cosmetic surgeries and are unsatisfied with the results, finding that their reactions can often be connected to disturbing childhood experiences. The author combines anonymous anecdotes from his patients with peer-reviewed research into the lasting impacts of traumatic events in childhood to show that many cases are the result of patients’ reactions to family dysfunction or abuse. He argues that the pursuit of elective cosmetic surgery—rhinoplasties, or nose jobs, in Constantian’s practice—should be understood in that context. The deeply researched book (each chapter includes several pages of endnotes, and full credit is given to existing rubrics like the Mellody model) takes readers through existing literature on human psychology, including body dysmorphic disorder, an exploration of how behaviors related to body image can be a response to trauma, and the physiological effects of painful experiences. He concludes that patients can be best served by developing a sense of resilience and dealing with the underlying issues as opposed to going to surgeons who simply accede to requests to lengthen or shorten their nose tips by a few millimeters. The author urges physicians to understand the “intensity of emotion” that may be involved in a case and to acknowledge the connections between emotional state and physical health. The writing here is strong, though certainly technical, and it is clear from the opening pages that the book is intended as a professional reference rather than casual reading material. The target audience is surgeons, and understanding that keeps the authoritative narrative tone from becoming overbearing (“Physicians see the effects of this neglect in patients who become childlike following surgery, or in Internet conversations where patients give medical advice to each other or pose questions that should be directed to their surgeons—or not even asked”). Although the patients who appear in the work’s many anecdotes may appear extreme (one’s “six-page letter read like the Unabomber Manifesto”), Constantian provides a level of detail and empathy that renders them entirely plausible, allowing readers to see how domineering parents, the lasting effects of physical abuse, or other childhood traumas can shape patients’ enduring unhealthy relationships with their bodies. The volume’s conclusions are based on solid science, and the author acknowledges socio-economic factors that may further shape patients’ responses. The occasional bits of humor (“If I were marooned with her for three days, she could probably turn me into Prufrock”) add a distinctive touch without detracting from the treatment of a serious subject. The concrete and actionable information provided gives readers useful takeaways, like comparisons of satisfaction rates between patients correcting real deformities and those having features that appear normal to a casual observer. There is some discussion of how patients can develop the resilience that seems to be the most effective way of managing these disorders, but the book remains focused on its readers, providing surgeons with guidance on improving their interactions with troublesome patients.
A solid, well-researched, and well-argued analysis of the behavior of plastic surgery patients.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-138-10030-5
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An unsatisfying amalgam of autobiography and literary criticism that achieves the dubious distinction of rendering its subject less, not more, interesting. Miller (English/City Univ. of New York; Getting Personal, not reviewed) examines Philip Roth's Patrimony, Simone de Beauvoir's A Very Easy Death, Art Spiegelman's Maus, and several other memoirs about the death of a parent. She leavens her didactic analyses (which rely heavily on feminist and psychoanalytic theory) with brief passages of autobiography. These fragments are meant to bolster her arguments and, more importantly, to demonstrate a correlation between the literary task of memorializing a dead parent and her own attempts to come to terms with the deaths of her mother and father. But the short personal sections, most less than a page, provide only glimpses of Miller's uneasy relationship with her parents. Too brief to sustain narrative momentum and too disjointed to develop cumulative emotional power, these details- -which hint of a long-running ``war'' with her mother and a sense of regret about her own childlessness—seem coy and elusive in the absence of context. Considering her willingness to divine the psychological motives of Roth and company, this elusiveness is curious. Miller ably delineates the pitfalls memoirists encounter: the fear of invading privacy balanced with the desire for self- knowledge; the danger of self-censorship inherent in family narrative; and most provocatively, the disturbing mix of regret and relief many feel at a parent's death. But ultimately she is more successful at drawing connections among the books she discusses than at using them to illuminate her personal struggle. ``The critic's classic move is to track the places where the autobiographer seems blind to the screen of his own self- disclosure,'' Miller notes. This volume would be more compelling if Miller examined her own motives more closely. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-19-509130-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A woman's excrutiatingly painful and explicit account of 14 years of incestuous abuse. With great courage and startling compassion, Silverman tells the story of how her father, once chief counsel to the secretary of the Interior and later an international banker, made her his sexual companion. Beginning when she was four years old, the incest escalated from fondling in the bathtub to oral and finally full-fledged and frequent vaginal intercourse. With her mother's unspoken acquiesence (``I was a present to her husband'') Silverman became a willing instrument in calming her beloved father's frequent rages. Extraordinarily frank (``It feels good, yes. I discover its pleasure before its shame''), Silverman is able to recreate the emotional trail that leads from terror to pleasure, from confusion and fear to disassociation. Two new personalities emerge to take the brunt of her father's sexual forays. One is Dina, passive and wanting only to please; the other is Celeste, angry, challenging, and hungry. But even with these guardian personae, the little girl Sue remains acutely vulnerable. As a second-grader, she felt so unprotected that she dropped out of school for a year; a few years later, during an especially traumatic period, she spent most of three months sleeping. As Silverman enters adolescence, she struggles to break away, but not until she leaves for college does her father abruptly stop his sexual marauding. Silverman spends the next 30 years trying to understand and control both her sexual aggressiveness and her self-starvation—an attempt, in essence, to make her abused body disappear. With therapy and a loving husband, she succeeds and, almost unbelievably, comes to terms with her parents as well. Harrowing in its depiction of savage violation and profoundly moving in its portrait of a child's fear, confusion, and desperate search for a safe place.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8203-1870-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
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