ABSTRACT
Diana has had quite major facial cosmetic surgery. This affecting account of her experience highlights, in her own words, the unconscious phantasy that fuels the pursuit of body modi®cation in some patients. She underlines, twice, the pleasure she gained from not telling her mother what she was going to do ± a strategy that ensures the disturbing triumph over her mother (disturbing because it is underpinned by violence towards the object) when she becomes, as she says, `unrecognisable' to her. Becoming unrecognisable to one's own mother must surely rank as one of the worst possible experiences ± for most people. However, Diana's experience points to the fact that the only way she can cope (what she calls `taking control over my life') is to look nothing like her mother, or nothing like how her mother made her, and nothing like the person the mother expects to see.
