Sander Gilman Quotes

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The operation itself is the social act that enabled the patient to come to terms with the immutability of his Jewish body. No matter what is done, the body will reveal itself to be that of a Jew. This crushing realization drives the patient beyond medicine for therapy. He eventually breaks with his racial-religious identity and converts to Catholicism, the ultimate form of passing in Catholic Vienna. Aesthetic surgery did not cure the patient of his Jewishness, it only masked it. Baptism became the answer….

Sander Gilman

As an aesthetic surgeon, one simply knows a difficult or dangerous or unhappy patient when one sees one. This learned response to the difficult patient places the surgeon in the position of the psychiatrist. The history of aesthetic surgery runs remarkably parallel to that of psychoanalysis as well as psychosomatic medicine.

Sander Gilman

Sander Gilman

Sander Gilman

Born: February 21, 1944 (age 81)

Bio: Sander L. Gilman is an American cultural and literary historian, born in New York. He is particularly well known for his contributions to Jewish studies and the history of medicine. He is the author or editor of over eighty books.

Known for:

The Jew's body (1991)
Seeing the insane (1982)
Fat: A Cultural History of Obesity (2008)
Difference and pathology (1985)
Jewish Self-Hatred (1986)

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