Back in 1996, during my first studies at the University at the Faculty of Additional Specialties, and for me it was a course “Psychologist in the field of public education,” my deeply respected teacher Galina Pavlovna Redya suggested at the seminar, a well-known psychological technique: think about how you would organize your life if you knew for sure that you had one year, one month, one day left to live (hereinafter with variations). I remember that this was long before she gave me Carl Jung’s book “The Problem of the Soul of Our Time” to read, which became my first entry into Jungianism. I am very grateful to Galina Pavlovna that she was able to discern in me the very soul in which Jung’s reasoning would resonate. It was the reading of this book that can be considered the beginning of my journey in analytical psychology. Of course, everything took shape much earlier in the unconscious: unwinding your life story backwards, this becomes obvious. Well, now comes a head-on collision with the question itself: let’s say you are a woman and you are 35-45 years old and you can eat a rejuvenating apple and become young and beautiful for a year or two, despite the fact that you know that the effect of the apple can be dangerous , and the effect is not so long, will you eat it? One day I will write memoirs about my life and work in Egypt in 1999-2001, but for now I will remember a couple of episodes, related or not very related to our topic. In the spring of 2001, I was then still young and tanned at the reception desk of the Royal Palace Hotel in Hurghada. Working as a reception manager in an Egyptian hotel, where at that time I was the only Russian employee, I will remember for a long time many adventures. The receptionist who gives you numbers and accepts documents is, one might say, the face of the hotel. One day, at the end of my shift, I was standing at the counter with my head down, adding up my balance, when a beautiful Polish tourist approached me to check in. She looked to be 28-32 years old. She looked at me too closely, I smiled, she did too, and quietly whispered: “You are very much good-looking guy!” I was, of course, embarrassed. He even blushed. I took her passport and asked her to wait. She winked at me and again whispered some kind of compliment. Later, she called me a couple of times from her room and so relaxedly, in a European way, offered to have sex with her. Let's skip the details. She was indeed a very good looking forty-seven year old woman. I learned this from my passport. To be honest, there was no connection with her: firstly, it was forbidden, secondly, according to her passport, she was the same age as my mother (I was 25 years old at the time), and thirdly, during her parade past the reception I was able to pay closer attention to her to see, she was completely made up of lips, nose, waist, chest, skin..., and yet her hands, a little neck and posture gave her away. So for the first time, I came across a woman who changed her body... My first reaction then was an ambivalent feeling of interest and rejection, then I was visited by a feeling of sadness: youth inevitably leaves, and for some reason women are especially desperate. Should I correct my appearance or not? To improve it for those who are already not deprived of nature, i.e. strives for perfection and ideal: youthful skin (face-lifting), a correct nose (rhinoplasty), seductive lips (and other lips, by the way, too (labiaplasty, contour plastic surgery)), a reverse procedure to restore virginity (hymenoplasty), an ideal figure ( liposuction, abdominoplasty) etc? Should women of Balzac age resort to the rejuvenating apples of plastic surgeons? And what about very young girls who pump up their bodies with silicone? Of course, there are many reasons to look for dysmorphophobia, dysmorphomania, personality disorders, low self-esteem, inadequate perception of reality, narcissism, traumatization in all this - all this, of course, can be found, at least if you delve analytically, psychologically and psychiatrically. However, in all this there is also something else that lies on the one handsurface, and on the other, very deep. On the surface lie socio-economic aspects: the development of a consumer worldview, the laws of supply and demand, the development of science and medicine, material opportunities, modern ideas about beauty, the place of sexuality and the body, the principle of living today, personal freedom and life expectancy. Deep inside lies the archetypal level of this issue: the dream of immortality and eternal spring, the desire to be a god (whatever is not a goddess or god, all are beauties and handsome), glorifying the aesthetic beauty of the male or female body: the gods of Ancient Greece, Egypt, Rome, even the Christian God even appears before us as a young, handsome man, and let us remember the gods of India... Russian and European fairy tales contain many stories on this topic: eternal youth and beauty, but, however, they always have a price that one or another hero must pay for his youth, immortality and not always for the guarantee of love, pay for yourself or at the expense of others. Well, modern myths about beautiful, immortal vampires, sorcerers, about the Devil giving youth to Dorian Gray, etc. But in reality, we see many other stories about the death that attempts to stop time bring, about many unsuccessful operations to save fading beauty and youth, stories about illusions that we cling to. Oh, I completely forgot: the king shouldn’t be old either. Today's trend towards young, strong leaders is clearly visible in politics. The Sage-Elder archetype is not in fashion these days. You yourself will find examples all over the place. Combining together, these two aspects give rise to a shift in the socio-psychological perception of radical correction of appearance. This is becoming the norm, not the exception. If earlier this was the prerogative of the stars, the elite and the rich, now it is available to many. The process does not stand still, and we must think that plastic surgery and aesthetic medicine will develop by leaps and bounds, firstly, because it is commercially profitable, and other areas of surgery and traumatology also help it, because the number of victims of man-made factors is growing: accidents, catastrophes, industrial injuries, etc., which also require radical correction; secondly, the cult of consumerism towards life, towards society, towards nature, towards one’s own soul and body will only grow: I want to have a beautifully laid rich table, clothes, a home, a car, a beautiful life and a beautiful body (my own and someone else’s) ; thirdly, many really want to become gods during their lifetime, and there are no ugly gods, and fourthly, the time of a schizotypal attitude to reality, which covered humanity after two bloody world wars, when intelligence and civilization collided with such a cruel animal truth about man, showing what he is capable of, shooting his blood brothers for ideological reasons in the forests near Moscow, or burning millions in gas ovens for the purity of the nation, has passed. A collective split was necessary to endure the unbearable truth about civilization and human nature. Later, the world plunged into the paranoia of the Cold War (Russia is now separately experiencing the return of paranoia: there are enemies, sodomites, blasphemers, and foreign spies all around). Currently, in my opinion, the developed world is witnessing a total immersion in demonstrativeness (hysterical radical) - the main thing is not who you are inside, but how you look on the outside, how you advertise and what impression you make. Who cares for your soul? You can’t touch it, you can’t exchange it, what’s the demand for it? But the body is another matter: a successful job offer, a successful marriage, sexual demand, drawing attention to oneself. A beautiful body increases our value and value. The value of a beautiful soul - this concept threatens to disappear completely. Do you know what it’s like to be unemployed at forty to forty-five years? When you seem to still want to live, but no one needs you. If you worked as a manager selling luxury goods, and you are used to looking great, and you are fired for, 7-07-2013).