Cosmetic Surgery: The Antichrist of True Wellbeing? A Plastic Surgeon Speaks Out
- olivierbranford
- Feb 21
- 12 min read
Dr Max Maltz wrote “You can always find the sun within your Self if you will only search... Low self esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on... Beauty is more than skin deep.” But who was this man and what did he mean? This will all become clear…
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere."
I used to be a reconstructive and aesthetic plastic surgeon. I loved my reconstructive cancer work and was excellent at it. By 2018 I had performed over 14,000 operations without a single complaint. I was voted in the top 5 cosmetic breast surgeons in the UK two years running in my first two years of cosmetic practice. Thankfully I am no longer a cosmetic surgeon. Why? The vast majority of my patients were delighted with their outcomes and I had 80 consecutive 5 star reviews, with no less than 5 star reviews. But I noticed that their resultant happiness with their outcome had nothing to do with the actual outcome. There is nothing wrong with cosmetic surgery per se as long as you realise that, as a patient, and as a human being, that it will not affect your happiness or joy for any lasting period of time, if at all. It just moves things around or makes things smaller or bigger, but it cannot affect the human condition. I came to realise that what determined the long term outcome in terms of joy for patients was whether or not they had an inner joy to begin with, before surgery.
An eminent colleague of mine told me that “As you go through your career, you just end up collecting, and I quote him, “A bucket of shit.” At the time I wondered what he meant by that. What I have realised is that you collect patient cases who’s expectation was that you would sort all of their life problems out through an operation. This makes the unaware plastic surgeon into an ‘Antichrist’ - someone who offers procedures with the implicit possibility of making someone happy who is not currently happy with their lives: By that I mean that they have had childhood trauma, psychological illness, or spiritual dis-ease, of which they are unconscious of or take great care to hide. The ludicrous nature of this is so obvious now. You also collect toxic people and those who are having surgery in order to catch you out in some way or even blackmail you. How messed up is that? Those people can become obsessed with your ‘destruction’ in proportion to their spiritual dis-ease. Maltz said that “Self-improvement is the name of the game, and your primary objective is to strengthen yourself, not to destroy an opponent... Adopt the motto - "It doesn't matter who's right, but what's right... If you intend to insist on justice in order to live a successful and happy life, you will not do so in this lifetime, on this planet.”"
Maltz said that “It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotised to some extent either by ideas he has uncritically accepted from others or ideas he has repeated to himself or convinced himself are true. These negative ideas have exactly the same effect upon our behaviour as the negative ideas implanted into the mind of a hypnotised subject by a professional hypnotist.”
Cosmetic surgeons need to realise that surgery cannot bring someone joy if they do not already have it. And cosmetic surgery patients need to realise that surgery will not ‘fix them’. The only work that brings joy is inner work, in other words the spiritual path. This is how you move from the modern day Antichrist to actually making a real difference. This had been my journey.
In the landmark book ‘Psycho-Cybernetics’, written almost 65 years ago in 1960, Maxwell Maltz laid down a revolutionary new take on many angles of psychology. The twist? Maltz was a plastic surgeon.
Maltz wrote that “Within you, whoever you may be, regardless of how big a failure you may think yourself to be, is the ability and the power to do whatever you need to do to be happy and successful. Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as soon as you can change your beliefs. Just as quickly as you can dehypnotise yourself from the ideas of “I can’t,” “I’m not worthy,” “I don’t deserve it” and other self-limiting ideas... It is common knowledge among psychologists that most of us underrate ourselves, short-change ourselves, sell ourselves short. Actually, there is no such thing as a superiority complex. People who seem to have one are actually suffering from feelings of inferiority; their "superior" self is a fiction, a coverup, to hide from themselves and others their deep-down feelings of inferiority and insecurity.”
Maltz wisely said that “The most liberating of all thoughts is disregard or 'disconcern' for what other people think. Famous mail-order impresario and entrepreneur J. Peterman wrote (in his autobiography 'Peterman Rides Again'); “Once you realise that most people are keeping up appearances and putting on a show, their approval becomes less important.” Excessive concern over what other people think inhibits personality more than any other factor... When you become too consciously concerned about 'What others think'; when you become too careful to consciously try to please other people; when you become too sensitive to the real or fancied disapproval of other people - then you have excessive negative feedback, inhibition, and poor performance.” Let go of your need for external validation.
No-one ever discussed these truths during my surgical training. Not one single lecture in 20 years of being involved in plastic surgery education, even despite being invited to be the deputy chair for education in plastic surgery.
If someone sued you as a plastic surgeon it usually has nothing to do with you: It’s their process. It’s always something unidentified or unresolved in them.
Maltz said that “Times will change for the better when you change.” By this he meant the inner work that everyone needs to do as part of their spiritual journey, not a cosmetic surgery procedure.
In a rare and important bit of wisdom Maltz said that "You make mistakes, mistakes don't make you.”
Maltz said that “The ''Self-image'' is the key to human personality and human behaviour. Change the Self image and you change the personality and the behaviour.” By ‘Self-image’ he meant the true Self, your Higher Self, not the self with a small ‘s’. This is the fake self, the persona, the mask, the ego, your appearance, or anything that anyone else can change that is external to your soul.
Maltz said that “If you make friends with your Self, you'll never be alone.” Don’t have surgery to get a relationship. Love your Self first, not in a Narcissistic way, but with deep compassion and understanding. Be your own best friend. They don’t care about your external appearance. When people love unconditionally it’s because they love your soul.
You don’t even age chronologically. Maltz wrote “Age not by years but by events and our emotional reactions to them.”
Maltz said that we should “Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown - but the present is real, and your opportunities are now. You must see these opportunities; they must be real for you. The catch is that they can't seem real if your mind is buried in past failures, if you keep reliving old mistakes, old guilts, old tragedies. Fight your way above the many inevitable traumatisations of your ego, escape damnation by the past, and look to the opportunities of the present. I don't mean some vague moment in the present - next week or next month, perhaps. I mean today, this minute.”
So if you are considering cosmetic surgery, meditate on this wisdom of Maltz’s quote first “You can always find the sun within your Self if you will only search… The most delightful surprise in life is to suddenly recognise your own worth… Our Self-image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other.”
Bruce Barton wrote “Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance.”
Maltz wrote that “Happiness is a mental habit, a mental attitude, and if it is not learned and practiced in the present it is never experienced. It cannot be made contingent upon solving some external problem (such as a cosmetic insecurity). When one problem is solved, another appears to take its place. Life is a series of problems. If you are to be happy at all, you must be happy - period! Not happy "because of" (cosmetic surgery)."
Max Maltz spoke out: Loudly and clearly. Joy is a choice. Just like plastic surgery. Know that joy does not depend on anything else other than your soul. You are enough. You are loveable as you are. Maltz said that “Times will change for the better when you change... The Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. It defines what you can and cannot do. Expand the Self-image and you expand the “Area of the possible.” The development of an adequate, realistic Self-image will seem to imbue the individual with new capabilities, new talents, and literally turn failure into success... I have found that one of the commonest causes of unhappiness among my patients is that they are attempting to live their lives on the deferred payment plan. They do not live, or enjoy life now, but wait for some future event or occurrence. They will be happy when they get married, when they get a better job, when they get the house paid for, when they get the children through college, when they have completed some task or won some victory. Invariably, they are disappointed. Happiness is a mental habit, a mental attitude, and if it is not learned and practiced in the present it is never experienced. It cannot be made contingent upon solving some external problem."
Dr. Norton L. Williams, a psychiatrist, addressing a medical convention, said that modern man’s anxiety and insecurity stemmed from a lack of Self-realisation, and that inner security can only be found “In finding in oneself an individuality, uniqueness, and distinctiveness that is akin to the idea of being created in the image of God.” He also said that Self-realisation is gained by “A simple belief in one’s own uniqueness as a human being, a sense of deep and wide awareness of all people and all things, and a feeling of constructive influencing of others through one’s own personality.”
Maltz advised his patients “Stop measuring yourself against 'their' standards. You are not 'them' and can never measure up. Neither can 'they' measure up to yours - nor should they. Once you see this simple, rather self-evident truth, accept it, and believe it, your inferior feelings will vanish... I have discovered that much nervousness and anxiety is caused by mentally trying to escape or run away from something that you have decided to go through with physically. If the decision is made to go through with physically. If the decision is made to go through with it - not to run away physically - why mentally keep considering or hoping for escape.”
Most surgeons are sadly unaware of any of these concepts. Maltz wrote that there is "The man who tapped the secrets of the Universe."
Maltz advised that the key is to “Get a new mental picture of your Self.” He said that “The discovery of the real Self can rescue a crumbling marriage, recreate a faltering career, and transform victims of ‘personality failure.’ On another plane, discovering your real Self means the difference between freedom and the compulsions of conformity.” The compulsions of conformity are that you feel the need to look like everyone else: Or rather that you feel the need to look like the person in the advertising photograph. I can assure you, with all my decades of experience working in the field, that even the person in the photograph doesn't look like the person in the photograph.
It's time to remove your old emotional scars. As Maltz wrote “It was as if personality itself had a “face.” This nonphysical “Face of personality” seemed to be the real key to personality change. If it remained scarred, distorted, 'ugly,' or inferior, the person himself acted out this role in his behavior regardless of the changes in physical appearance. If this 'face of personality' could be reconstructed, if old emotional scars could be removed, then the person himself changed, even without facial plastic surgery. Once I began to explore this area, I found more and more phenomena that confirmed the fact that the 'Self-image,' the individual’s mental and spiritual concept or 'picture' of himself, was the real key to personality and behaviour."
"In forming good emotional habits, and in breaking bad ones,” said Dr. Knight Dunlap, “We have to deal primarily with thought and thought habits. ‘As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.”
In his book 'The Conquest of Happiness', Bertrand Russell says, “I was not born happy. As a child, my favorite hymn was: ‘Weary of earth and laden with my sin.’ In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics. Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life; I might almost say that with every year that passes I enjoy it more. . . . Very largely it is due to a diminishing preoccupation with myself."
Namaste.
Olly
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