Body Image Adaptation
to Reconstructive Surgery
for Acquired Disfigurement
THOMAS PRUZINSKY
This chapter focuses on how individuals respond to reconstructive surgery after having acquired a disfigurement. The physical and psychosocial variables influencing individual adaptation to surgical reconstruction are numerous and complexly interrelated. This brief chapter describes those factors particularly relevant to the process of adapting to reconstructive surl gery at five specific time periods: predisfigurement, acquiring disfigurement, initial surgical reconstruction, subsequent reconstructive surgeries, and final surgical outcome. The clinical and empirical literature on patients' response to reconstructive surgery for facial trauma and breast disfigurement is used to exemplify this adaptation process.
AND PSYCHOSOCIAL FUNCTIONING
Body image adaptation to reconstructive surgery must be understood in terms of the individual's predisfigurement body image and psychosocial functioning. Body image formation is, of course, subject to many influences, including the objective appearance of the individual (including the face and/or breasts). Particularly relevant variables include the individual's degree of appearance investment, appearance evaluation, overall psychological functioning, social skills, sexual functioning, and social support. (See
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Body Image: A Handbook of Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice.
Contributors: Thomas F. Cash - Editor, Thomas Pruzinsky - Editor.
Publisher: Guilford Press.
Place of publication: New York.
Publication year: 2002.
Page number: 440.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
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