Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 14, 2026

Single-Port Robotic-assisted Transaxillary Breast-conserving Surgery: A Prospective, Single-arm, Non-randomized Phase IIa Clinical Trial
Published on: August 19, 2025
Copies without originals: the psychodynamics of cosmetic surgery
1Tavistock Clinic, London, United Kingdom. alemma@tavi-port.nhs.uk
Abstract:
The use of cosmetic surgery and procedures has sharply increased in recent years. This paper outlines an object-relational framework for understanding the unconscious fantasies that may drive the pursuit of body modification and proposes three categories of such fantasies. For some individuals, the pursuit of "beauty" through cosmetic surgery provides a psychic retreat from the reality of dependency as the self retreats into believing that it can create itself (the self-made fantasy). For others, it is a means for creating a felt-to-be ideal self, thereby averting the pain of the loss of an object that would love and desire the self (the perfect-match fantasy). For still others, it may be the only means of expelling an object felt to be alien or polluting that is unconsciously identified with the body (the reclaiming fantasy).
Related Concept Videos
Psychosurgery
Historical Development of Psychosurgery
In the 1930s, Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz introduced a surgical procedure designed...
The Sense of Self: Reflected Self-Appraisal and Social Comparison
Self-Discrepancy Theory
Comparing Copy Number Variations and SNPs
Copy number variations or CNVs are the structural variations that cover more than 1kb of DNA sequence. The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), on the other hand, is a single nucleotide change or a point mutation that is found in more than 1%...
Protecting Self-Esteem
Self-Presentation: Self-Monitoring and Self-Handicapping