By the Age of 40, Everyone has the Face they Deserve.

The above title is taken from a quote by George Orwell, one which was more recently updated by Martin Amis, who said that "by the age of 40, everyone has the face they can afford." Amis' little saying may be the more apposite for our times, but there is something about the original Orwell, with its implications that all our experience, all our sins and virtues, may be written on our visages, that captured my imagination.
So, as I pass 40 this year, on December 5th, to be precise, I thought I would print here what my own face actually looks like. Up until now, readers of this blog will only have seen the picture I use of myself as a child. So, for the first time, here is what the nearly 40 year old David looks like.

Oh my, what a handsome chap I am! Seriously, though, if all our sins and virtues do happen to be written on our faces by this age, then I think, perhaps, I'm not doing too bad. Indeed, I am now quite happy with the way I look, but this was not always the case. Having piled on the pounds, due, mostly, to taking anti-psychotic medication, I became deeply unhappy with my appearance. OK, there are some who might say that appearances don't matter, are deceptive even, but if you are unhappy with yourself, I think this is a different matter, and I can attest, that since losing a great deal of the weight I carried, I have become a more confident and assured person.
And, as tomorrow is World Mental Health Day, I thought I would try to link this in some way to mental health. The best I can come up with is a little foray into the work of Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909). He was the Italian founder of the Italian School of "Positivist Criminology", which drew concepts from physiognomy, eugenics, psychiatry and Social Darwinism in its formation. In his theory of "anthropological criminology", Lombroso stated that criminality was inherited and could be identified by physical defects, which confirmed the criminal as savage or atavistic. Criminals, to him, represented a reversion to a primitive or subhuman type, characterized by physical features reminiscent of apes, lower primates and early man.
So, what has this to do with mental health? Well, as well as drawing on psychiatry in the formation of his theories, Lombroso once took charge of an "insane" asylum in Pesaro in 1871, later becoming a professor of psychiatry in 1896. So, it wouldn't be at all surprising to find that the mentally ill, as well as the criminal (and let's face it, the two are often confused, even today), perhaps fell under his deeply skewed gaze at some point or other.
Just so as you can judge whether Lombroso's theories were correct, here is a picture of an ape to compare with the one of me above.

I'm sure you'll agree that there is a certain simian similarity, descended anyway, as we all are, from ape-like creatures. But that's where (I hope!) it ends. So, I'm sure that Lombroso was pretty much up the creek with his theories, and got away with such (evil?) ideas by being protected by a cloak of intellectual and social propriety. But, as for getting the face I deserve, and considering my unwell past, I think I could probably be doing worse.