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Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul: Race and Psychology in the Shaping of Aesthetic Surgery
Why do physicians who’ve taken the Hippocratic Oath willingly cut into seemingly healthy patients? How do you measure the success of surgery aimed at making someone happier by altering his or her body? Sander L. Gilman explores such questions in Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul, a cultural history of the connections between beauty of body and happiness of mind. Following these themes through an impressive range of historical moments and players, Gilman traces how aesthetic alterations of the body have been used to “cure” dissatisfied states of mind.Synthesizing a vast body of related literature and containing a comprehensive bibliography, Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul will appeal to a broad audience, including those interested in the histories of medicine and psychiatry, and in philosophy, cultural studies, Jewish cultural studies, and race and ethnicity.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
38 people want to read
About the author
Sander L. Gilman
124 books39 followersSander L. Gilman is an American cultural and literary historian. He is known for his contributions to Jewish studies and the history of medicine. He is the author or editor of over ninety books. Gilman's focus is on medicine and the echoes of its rhetoric in social and political discourse.
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May 5, 2021
In the age of modernity, and especially after the outrage of social media platforms, I believe that this book is a must read.
This is one of Sander L.Gilman's masterpieces. For despite it being an academic research, the style of writing is simple and light, it invites you to delve into the theme of perception.
It guides you through the horizon of interconnection between seemingly two opposing fields of study; science and psychology. By introducing the field of psychoanalysis -which combines psychology and neurosis- the book's bullet point is that our self-perception, and that of people around us, play a game of intersubjective balance or rather unbalance.
The core of the book is the attempt to answer the claim that beauty (created and not given by natural forces) can actually cure our psychological disturbances (that originate from our sense of self-perception in relation to those around us), and by extension heal the soul.
I believe that the answer to this question, despite it being simple and easy to answer, yet it demands such a book to reveal the ugliness of "beauty creation" and the psychological endeavors of such claims.
This is one of Sander L.Gilman's masterpieces. For despite it being an academic research, the style of writing is simple and light, it invites you to delve into the theme of perception.
It guides you through the horizon of interconnection between seemingly two opposing fields of study; science and psychology. By introducing the field of psychoanalysis -which combines psychology and neurosis- the book's bullet point is that our self-perception, and that of people around us, play a game of intersubjective balance or rather unbalance.
The core of the book is the attempt to answer the claim that beauty (created and not given by natural forces) can actually cure our psychological disturbances (that originate from our sense of self-perception in relation to those around us), and by extension heal the soul.
I believe that the answer to this question, despite it being simple and easy to answer, yet it demands such a book to reveal the ugliness of "beauty creation" and the psychological endeavors of such claims.
Displaying 1 of 1 review