Shrinks on break get "a little work done" -- and hope patients won't notice.
By Christine Muhlke, New York Magazine
Think your therapist's off basking in Wellfleet? Don't be so sure. She may not be on the beach at all; she may, in fact, be under the knife.
Turns out that a surprising number of therapists use the off month to do something about their own self-esteem issues: get plastic surgery.
"I did it August 1st," says "Samantha," a Long Island analyst, of last year's eye-, face-, and neck-lift. "I take August off. Freud did" -- giving her time to recover without her patients wondering about all those nasty bruises. "If not, I knew it'd be another year of being depressed."
And while most plastic-surgery patients don't mind coming back from "vacation" with a noticeably cuter nose, therapists are adamant about looking . . . the same. "Please make sure I look like myself!" is the most common refrain, says Dr. Z. Paul Lorenc, who does about ten therapists every August. They fear that looking too good could destroy the patient-analyst relationship.
"I really -- and this could be my own self-deception -- am hoping that people aren't going to notice," says "Sarah," a 51-year-old Manhattan psychotherapist. "It seems to fly in the face of what we're telling people: to accept yourself." The worst outcome, she says, would be "a complete loss of faith -- patients will decide I can't help them." read more