Self-Image - Lessons from a plastic surgeon

In this newsletter:
- Psycho-Cybernetics
- Maxwell Maltz, MD - Plastic surgeon
- Cybernetics
- Self-Image
- The Creative Mechanism
- Ireland with Mom

Psycho-Cybernetics

“A plastic surgeon does not simply alter a man’s face. He alters the man’s inner self. The incisions he makes are more than skin deep. They frequently cut deep into the psyche as well.
- Maxwell Maltz, MD, FICS

When I was a little kid, around 6 or 7 years old, my mom had this book called Psycho-Cybernetics. It was written by Maxwell Maltz. 

I had no clue what "Psycho" or "Cybernetics" meant but I was fascinated by the weird title. It must be an important book, I thought, because it was written by an MD, a medical doctor. 

The title sounded futuristic and scientific. At the time, Ray Bradbury's science fiction book, The Martian Chronicles, was circulating around our elementary school in San Jose, CA. Maybe Maltz's book is about outer space, I was thinking. 

Maxwell Maltz
Maltz earned a doctorate in medicine in 1932 from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He also trained under German plastic surgeons who were considered the most advanced in cosmetic surgery at the time.

Psycho-Cybernetics, published in 1960, is considered a classic in the subject of self-help.

So much of what has been written about visualization and mental imagery was influenced by Maltz’s work. Subsequent personal development experts like Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, and others have leveraged Maltz’s early work.

Plastic Surgery
Twenty years before he published Psycho-Cybernetics, Maltz wrote New Faces, New Futures: Rebuilding Character with Plastic Surgery, a collection of case histories where facial plastic surgery had “opened the door to a new life for many people.”

In New Faces, New Futures, he told of the changes that happen to a person’s personality when you change their face. “In most cases, a person who had a conspicuously ugly face, or some ‘freakish’ feature, corrected by surgery, experienced an almost immediate rise in self-esteem, self-confidence. But in some cases, the patient continued to feel inadequate and experienced feelings of inferiority. In short, these ‘failures’ continued to feel, act, and behave just as if they still had an ugly face.”

"I feel that if changing a man’s face is going to change the inner man as well, I have a responsibility to acquire specialized knowledge in the field, also.”

“In my search for ‘self-image,’ I also had to cross boundaries, although invisible ones.” What he meant was he crossed from the U.S. to Germany to learn cosmetic surgery, and now, to learn about self-image, he not only needed to know surgery but he also needed to learn psychology.  

This led Maltz to conclude that reconstruction of the physical image was not the real key to personality change. There was “something else,” as if personality had a “face.” He called it a nonphysical “face of personality,” and it was the real key to personality change. “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 behavior.”

When Maltz wrote the book, talking about self-image was regarded as unorthodox since it was outside of the box of the “closed system” of the “science of psychology” at the time and sought answers about human behavior in the disciplines of physics, anatomy, and the new science of cybernetics.

Cybernetics
Maltz's inspirations came from several sources, including Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics, a book that explains animals and self-guided missiles as goal-seeking mechanisms.

“I found most of my answers in the new science of cybernetics, which restored teleology as a respectable concept in science. It is rather strange that the new science of cybernetics grew out of the work of physicists and mathematicians rather than that of psychologists, especially when it is understood that cybernetics has to do with teleology – the goal-striving, goal-oriented behavior of mechanical systems…The new science of cybernetics made possible an important breakthrough in psychology…The fact that this breakthrough came from the work of physicists and mathematicians should not surprise us. Any breakthrough in science is likely to come from outside the system. ‘Experts’ are the most thoroughly familiar with the developed knowledge inside the prescribed boundaries of a given science. Any new knowledge must usually come from the outside.”

Self-Image
Maltz says all of us, whether we realize it or not, have a “mental blueprint” or “picture of ourselves” that we hold in our minds. This self-image is our idea of the “sort of person I am.” It is a belief we have based on our past experiences, “our successes and failures, our humiliations, our triumphs, and the way other people have reacted to us, especially in early childhood.” From these experiences we create a picture of who we are, a picture of our “self.” He says, “We do not question its validity, but proceed to act upon it just as if it were true.”

Our self-image is the “golden key” to Well-Being for two reasons, according to Maltz:

1. All our actions, feelings, behaviors, and even abilities are derived from this self-image.

We “act like” the person we see ourselves to be. A person who sees themself as a “failure-type” will find a way to fail. A person who sees himself as a “victim of injustice,” one “who was meant to suffer,” will create circumstances to validate this view. A person who sees himself as a "success-type" will find a path to succeed.

2. The self-image can be changed.

Maltz says there is strong evidence that demonstrates we are never too young or too old to change our self-image, enabling us to live a new life. Positive thinking about who we want to be is not enough. We need to focus first on changing our thinking about ourselves for positive change. Once the concept of self is changed, other things consistent with the new concept of self are accomplished easily and without strain.

“You must find your self acceptable to ‘you.’ You must have a self that you can trust and believe in. You must have a self that you are not ashamed to ‘be,’ and one that you can feel free to express creatively, rather than hide or cover up…When your self-image is adequate and one that you can be wholesomely proud of, you feel self-confident. You feel free to ‘be yourself’ and to express yourself. You function at your optimum. When it is the object of shame, you attempt to hide it rather than express it. Creative expression is blocked. You become hostile and hard to get along with.”

The Creative Mechanism
The new science of cybernetics, as Maltz wrote in 1960, proves that the subconscious mind is not a “mind” at all, but instead it’s a “goal-striving ‘servo-mechanism’ consisting of the brain and nervous system.” He says our mind (consciousness) operates this automatic goal-striving machine (subconsciousness). This machine, he emphasizes, functions similar to a guided missile system.

This machine, the “Creative Mechanism,” works automatically, depending on the goals you set for it. Give it “success goals,” and it operates as a “Success Mechanism.” Give it “negative goals,” and it functions as a “Failure Mechanism.” The brain and nervous system operate on autopilot, leading us in the direction of what we consciously think about, positive or negative. Success and happiness, or failure and unhappiness, are the result of the goals we provide to our Creative Mechanism.

“The goals that our own Creative Mechanism seeks to achieve are mental images, or mental pictures, which we create by the use of imagination. The key goal-image is our self-image."

Our self-image provides the limits, “the area of the possible,” for the accomplishment of any particular goals. Our Creative Mechanism works with the information we feed into it (thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, interpretations, etc.).

Operating the Success Mechanism
- The Success Mechanism needs a goal, a “target” to aim for.

- The means may not be apparent. But it’s the mechanism’s function to provide the means.

- It’s our job to simply provide the goal. Think in terms of the goal, the end result, and the means will come from the mechanism.

- After you have a mental image of the goal you desire, the how will come to you, not before.

- Mistakes are part of the process. The servo-mechanism makes course corrections based on negative feedback provided by mistakes.

- Trial and error are part of the process. The mechanism corrects for errors until a successful path is determined.

- Trust is a necessary part of the process of the mechanism. We need to let it do its work, rather than force it to work. Provide the goal, then let go. 

Imagination
- Maltz says imagination plays a more important role in our lives than we think.

- We act not because of “will,” but because of imagination.

- We act, feel, and perform according to what we imagine to be true about ourselves and our environment.

- Our nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a real experience; it reacts to what we think or imagine to be true.

 - Up until that point, no one taught people to go back into the past to relive their best memories; to replay their best moments, victories, successes, and happiest times.

- By reliving and experiencing our best moments again, we can use our imagination to see ourselves achieving a goal in the future, as if it was happening in the moment now.

“Cybernetics regards the human brain, nervous system, and muscular system as a highly complex servo-mechanism: an automatic goal-seeking machine that ‘steers’ its way to a target or goal, automatically correcting course when necessary…When you see a thing clearly in your mind, the creative Success Mechanism takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort.”

The method involves visualization, or “creative mental picturing,” of experiencing through our imagination.

Henry J. Kaiser, the American shipbuilding industrialist, attributed a lot of his success to the use of his imagination, according to Maltz. Kaiser said: “You can imagine your future.”

Maltz mentions Edward McGoldrick, founder of New York’s Alcoholic Therapy Bureau in the 1940s. McGoldrick, used these techniques helping alcoholics visualize enjoying life without liquor.

Maltz also mentions Harry Emerson Fosdick, who said:

“Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye and you will be drawn toward it. Picture yourself vividly as defeated and that alone will make victory impossible. Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success. Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.”

This is a picture of Fosdick on the cover of Time magazine in 1930:

Imagining an experience is equivalent to an actual experience as far as the nervous system is concerned.

“The unhappiest of mortals is that man who insists on reliving the past, over and over in imagination – continually criticizing himself for past mistakes – continually condemning himself for past sins.”
-Maxwell Maltz

“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
-Abraham Lincoln

“The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The building of an adequate self-image is something that should continue throughout a lifetime."
-Maxwell Maltz

Maltz's book brings up my memories of The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) by Norman Vincent Peale. This book was a massive best seller across generations. At home as a kid, it was right there on the bookshelf with Psycho-Cybernetics. 

I have to credit Mom for exposing me to the power of our thoughts. I'm starting to think she is my writing muse.  

In 2019, I took Mom and her dear California childhood friend, Darlene, to Ireland. Both have Irish roots.

It was one of my best travel adventures ever. I was their chauffeur. I drove the three of us, two 86-year-old gals and me, from Dublin to Sligo to Galway, and back to Dublin.

Mom passed away in 2022. Darlene celebrated her 90th birthday six days ago. I wished her happy birthday. We are both grateful for our friendship.

Here's a picture of us in Dublin outside McDaids, one of our favorite pubs. Mom is on the right. We enjoyed drinking Guinness together. 

As Maxwell Maltz, MD said:
“Faith, courage, interest, optimism, looking forward bring us new life and more life.”

“Futility, pessimism, frustration, or living in the past are not only characteristic of “old age,” they also contribute to it.”

Thank you for reading!

Be well,

Peter Pavlina