The Humanistic Approach to Aging and the Plastic Surgeon's Role

The humanistic approach, including literature and arts, could be a tool for understanding the patient's mindset and establishing the surgeon's role. Dorian Gray syndrome, derived from a novel written by Oscar Wilde is a disease with three diagnostic criteria: body dysmorphic disorder, narcissistic regression, and denial of the maturation process. Suppressing patients' quest for youth is not possible by psychiatric methods. Title of " No Country for Old Men ," written by Cormac McCarthy, was derived from the poem "Sailing to Byzantium," which William Butler Yeats. Yeats desires to sail to Byzantium, which is a "land for old men," and articulates the appearance that he desires. In a novel titled "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce, Stephen Dedalus found perfect beauty in a girl. Joyce described the morphology of a "perfect beauty." A Korean writer, Lee Ok, wrote an essay entitled "Questions to the Mirror," which compares the external appearance of young and old faces. He asks the mirror; the mirror replies and comforts him. A painting "Old Man and Death," made by Joseph Wright is derived from Aesop's fables: old man never wants to die despite of exhaustion. "The Fountain of Youth" created by Lucas Cranach was based on the belief that certain baths might heal and rejuvenate. As Harold Gillies who operated until the age of 78, aging makes plastic surgeons more experienced and wiser than when they were young because surgery is a brain job, not a job for the hands.