Someone Else's Face in the Mirror: Identity and the New Science of Face Transplants [Hardcover]

Carla Bluhm (Author), Nathan Clendenin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0313356165 | ISBN-13: 978-0313356162 | Publication Date: April 30, 2009 | Edition: 1

In 2005, surgeons in France removed part of the face from a cadaver and grafted it onto the head of a 38-year-old woman grossly disfigured by a dog attack. Three years later, in December, 2008, surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic announced they had performed the first U.S. face transplant. Although modern culture is accustomed to pushing medicine and the human body beyond all limits, the world's first partial face transplant and the seven that have followed have caused a stir that still reverberates globally.

This book begins with the story of Isabelle Dinoire, the recipient of the first face transplant, and chronicles her surgery and battles with tissue rejection. Its scope widens with a look at how surgical teams, including three U.S. transplant teams, are in a global race to perform the first full face transplant, and at how medical history has led up to this point—with prior successful transplants ranging from body parts as simple as cornea to those as neurologically complicated as the heart, a hand, and a penis.

The most novel among these surgeries—the face transplant—conjures up particular and expansive psychological issues. Authors Bluhm and Clendenin show how transplant recipients struggle with functional issues including a lifetime of anti-rejection drugs, a danger highlighted by the recent death of the second face transplant patient, in China. But just as challenging in the case of face transplant is the psychological effect on—and potential threat to—identity. Who are you, if suddenly your face—or a significant portion of it—is not what you were born with? What is it like to look in the mirror, and see a face that is not the one you have always had? Dinoire lamented, "It will never be me." That statement is an absolute simplification of the identity issues a face transplant can create, explain the authors. Bluhm and Clendenin show how, across history and media, humankind—via medicine, literature, film, and other media—has dreamed of a day when face transplants would be possible.

With so many disfigurements occurring among the military in Iraq, and experimental face transplants too expensive for implementation in the private sector, it is likely that the U.S. military will take the reins and further face transplant techniques as quickly as possible to serve injured personnel.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"While the clinical and historical aspects of the surgical procedures are aimed at medical professionals, general readers will appreciate the themes of identity, change and recovery."

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SciTech Book News

"Someone Else's Face in the Mirror gives students, practitioners, and others the opportunity to think about identity from a different perspective. Psychopathology can cause major shifts in how people perceive themselves. Genetic disorders and other diseases can also affect self-perception.
As faces lead people into every interpersonal contact, trauma that includes facial disfigurement increases the difficulty of treatment. Practitioners need to support medical

treatments that improve a person's chance of a life that is suited to that person. Someone Else's Face in the Mirror allows professionals to grapple with an issue that might not come up otherwise and to form an opinion that each can then use to advocate for clients and patients. It also allows the reader to take a fresh look at how psychoanalytic theories can be expanded to explain and create interventions that treat and resolve physical and psychological trauma. That could then become the personal integration of innovative technique, trauma, and identity."

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PsycCRITIQUES

Review

"A serious and needed exploration of the traumatic impact of face transplants and how to support the hope this surgery provides. The authors pay special attention to war veterans, especially those disfigured in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as individuals suffering disfigurement from a variety of causes. This book is creative and caring, opening insight into the sense of identity tied to the human face and problems one must engage in disfigurement and its amelioration. This book will help doctors, patients and all those interested in the vicissitudes of identity, injury and change."

(

Michael Eigen, PhD
Author, Feeling Matters and Flames From the Unconscious: Trauma, Madness and Faith

Author, Feeling Matters

and Flames From the Unconscious: Trauma, Madness and Faith.

)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 171 pages
• Publisher: Praeger; 1 edition (April 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0313356165
• ISBN-13: 978-0313356162
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,286,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

On the final episode of ABC's reality medical program Boston Med famed surgeon Bo Pomahac conducts the second face transplant performed in the United States. In what is perhaps the most pivotal moment of the show Dr. Pomahac offers face transplant recipient James Maki a mirror to inspect his newly sutured donor face. After a few moments of reflection Maki declares that this new face in fact looks like his old face, that he perceives his own face in the mirror. After this remarkable moment Pomahac poignantly expresses his awe that this new face had became, even at first glance, the patient himself.

It is precisely within this moment of the mirror -- the intersection of medicine and psychology -- that this book emerged. Years before the Boston transplant Isabelle Dinoir in 2005 underwent the world's first facial allograft. Following that amazing surgery I, and a talented undergraduate student, began an intellectual endeavor to understand the importance, both psychologically and culturally, of face transplants. From those initial conversations emerged this book written over the spring and summer of 2008 -- published in 2009 by Praeger Publishers. Within the book are the stories of James Maki, Isabelle Dinoir, Connie Culp and other recipients of donated faces. The surgeons themselves are discussed, as well as, cultural implications such as film and literary connections, medical history and a detailed psychological analysis of the potential outcomes surrounding issues related to identity.

Carla Bluhm is currently an assistant professor at The College of Coastal Georgia in Brunswick, GA. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts and her graduate degrees (MA, M.E.d, M.Phil. and Ph,D.) from Teachers College Columbia University. Her co-author Nathan Clendenin is currently pursuing graduate studies at Teachers College.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What if you lost your face?, August 2, 2009

By 

J R "observateur" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Someone Else's Face in the Mirror: Identity and the New Science of Face Transplants (Hardcover)

If we look at a group photo, we always search for our own FACE in the crowd. What if we LOST that face? Are WE gone forever? Are we then dead? If we get another person's face, do we become THEM? Have we lost our own identity along with our own face?

It's all about IDENTITY, and face transplants.

Graphically bold and sexually frank descriptions of transplants of various body parts are included.

Up to the minute procedures and ideas are thoroughly explained in a sensitive, knowledgeable and eloquent way that fascinates, educates and even entertains.

3.0 out of 5 stars A good read, but not what I was looking for and NOT worth the price, August 17, 2011

By 

Ceqli - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Someone Else's Face in the Mirror: Identity and the New Science of Face Transplants (Hardcover)

I'm a writer currently working on a science fiction / dystopia-themed novel, and one of the key plot elements is a face transplant. I was looking for a book that covered the technical aspects of surgery, with a BRIEF discussion of the psychological implications of the procedure. This book spends all of two pages (if that) covering what actually happens during a facial transplant. The rest of it is hardly worth calling science. NOT worth the price.