Self-actualization Needs as the Motivation in Doing Plastic Surgery
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Therefore, self-actualization needs form a part of Hope Donahue’s motivation in doing plastic surgery. It motivates Hope Donahue to do plastic
surgery in order to achieve self-actualization. She believes that plastic surgery will give her a direction and control of her life; in other words, plastic surgery will
enable her to use all her ability, capacity, and potency to be a complete human being. As the proof, her first plan to visit a plastic surgery doctor makes her feel
that “The pervasive emptiness I felt vanished; suddenly this lunch, this day, my whole life had meaning and worth” Donahue 93. Then she regards her visits to
the doctor’s office as her main purpose in life, or “what I lived for”, which she needs to provide her with “the fulfillment I wasn’t getting anywhere else in my
life” Donahue 38. Hope thinks that her needs for self-actualization can be fulfilled by another
person in a short time. She lets herself be directed and told what to do by her doctor because she believes that he can give her instant self-actualization by
telling her what to do and who to be, as described below. With no plan laid out for me to follow, with no one to dazzle or disappoint,
I was lost. With Dr. S—I found, once again, someone who would tell me what to do and who to be. There was a crucial difference, however,
between Dr. S—and the other people upon whose opinion I had hung: He held a scalpel Donahue 37.
As shown in the quotation above, Hope depends on the doctor to lead her from her current condition of being “lost” with “no plan laid out for me to follow” and “no
one to dazzle or disappoint” to tell her “what to do and what to be” Donahue 37, or in other words to achieve self-actualization. Moreover, the doctor is forceful
enough to make Hope feel as if he can lead her to achieve self-actualization. Hope
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describes this force by saying that he “held a scalpel” Donahue 37. To Hope, the scalpel, a tool for plastic surgery, represents the tool which can bring her to self-
actualization. Hope tries to compress her needs of “Love, and Purpose, and a Life”
Donahue 204, or in other words her need of self-actualization, into more specific needs mostly related to her appearance, as described below.
When you are in enough pain, you will settle for anything that promises a smidgen of comfort, no matter how bizarre. The more bizarre, the better,
because it is too vast, too huge and scary, to admit that you want Love, and Purpose, and A Life. I want, and the wanting feels so huge and
overwhelming that I must try to narrow it to a specific need. Higher cheekbones. Bigger breasts. Dr. S—‘s fickle attention. Hank’s empty
desire Donahue 204.
Therefore, based on all the explanation above, the needs for self-actualization become one of the factors that motivate Hope to undergo plastic surgery.
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