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What a pleasure it is to review a book that brings psychoanalytic understanding to happenings in our contemporary culture! Most psychoanalytic writers shy away from topics that have to do with “the real world out there,” preferring to write about more timeless concepts. Not so this book's author, Alessandra Lemma; furthermore, hers is an extraordinarily clear and well-written book. It provides an excellent and thorough review of the literature on the body and body modification from psychoanalytic, sociological, anthropological, and pop-cultural points of view.
Since time began, human beings have decorated, pierced, and altered their faces and bodies in various ways in order to conform to cultural demands or to rebel against them. In our culture today, the mass media—including the accessibility of images on the Internet and television reality shows, to name just two among many factors—and the development of highly sophisticated technology, as well as a large number of medical doctors seeking to augment the income provided by managed care, all contribute to solidifying the need to appear younger, more beautiful or handsome, thinner, more toned and muscular, and so on.
I do not know whether narcissistic and identity issues of the kind I see in my office today are more severe than in other times, but it is clear that narcissistic problems are rewarded by our culture in a way that they