Oxford Handbook of the Psychology of Appearance

Abstract

(from the chapter) This chapter focuses on the experience of those whose appearance is changed as the result of a traumatic event. Traumatic events typically include road traffic accidents, industrial accidents, violent attacks, and burns sustained through fires or other means. When injuries occur, individuals are often confronted with a traumatic, life-threatening situation that is of sudden onset, with little or no warning. Even more minor injuries can cause considerable pain, discomfort, hospitalization, scarring, and physical limitations. The physical and psychological challenges initiated by this are further exacerbated by medical treatments which are often themselves traumatic, lengthy, and fraught with potential setbacks and uncertain outcomes. The pain, loss of function, changes in skin sensation and disfigurement caused by a traumatic injury often provoke a range of adverse emotional reactions and undoubtedly impact on an individual's body image. There appears also to be something particularly stigmatizing about scars resulting from these kind of injuries. There is nothing like such a scar to tell a film audience that a character is a bad apple; think of Al Pacino in Scarface (1983) and 'Freddy' from A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and 'Two-face' and 'The Joker' in 'Batman: The Dark Night' (2008). Even children's films feature examples of malevolent characters with damaged skin. The Disney film The Lion King (1994) stars Jeremy Irons as the voice of the merciless villain who is named after his 'scar' (seen across his eye). Much has been documented about how the experience of a traumatic injury which results in a visible difference can impact on the individual—from personal accounts, qualitative investigations, and from larger, quantitative studies. Most of the research in this area tends to focus on the negative impact of traumatic and disfiguring injuries. Two themes emerge here—the impact on the self (feelings, behaviour, self-esteem, and body image) and the impact on relationships with others (from strangers through to intimate partners). These themes are not entirely independent—for example, feelings (such as depression or anxiety) can undoubtedly affect the way we face social situations and interact with others. However, these two strands provide a useful way to structure our exploration of people's experiences in this field. As we shall see, there is much interest in identifying characteristics that may place individuals at risk of poor adjustment post injury. However, more recently the literature has focused on those who seem to cope well. Whilst this literature is relatively small, it yields some interesting findings—some of which we shall show has been put to good effect in therapeutic interventions and support initiatives for patients and their families. To illustrate these points, this chapter will focus specifically on the area of visible difference acquired through a traumatic burn injury. At its most extreme, a burn can be described as 'the most extensive and frightening [injury] a person can receive' (Van Loey & Van Son, 2003). There has been a significant amount of research conducted around the experience of burn injury and many of the findings apply equally to visible differences acquired through other traumatic injuries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)