Apotemnophilia

But just what counts as apotemnophilia is part of the problem in explaining it. ❋ Unknown (2000)

Clinicians and patients alike often suggest that apotemnophilia is like gender-identity disorder, and that amputation is like sex-reassignment surgery. ❋ Unknown (2000)

If sexual desire, even paraphilic sexual desire, can be directed toward one's own identity, then perhaps it is a mistake to try to distinguish pure apotemnophilia from the kind that is contaminated with sexual desire. ❋ Unknown (2000)

Smith, in agreement with many of the wannabes I have spoken with, believes that apotemnophilia is closer to gender-identity disorder, the diagnosis given to people who wish to live as the opposite sex. ❋ Unknown (2000)

Smith has elsewhere speculated that apotemnophilia is not a psychiatric disorder but a neuropsychological one, with biological roots. ❋ Unknown (2000)

His example is the disorder called apotemnophilia, whose sufferers are so obsessed with the belief that one or more parts of their body are not supposed to be there that many eventually attempt to amputate the offending parts. ❋ Bradamant (2003)

In 1977 the Johns Hopkins psychologist John Money published the first modern case history of what he termed "apotemnophilia" — an attraction to the idea of being an amputee. ❋ Unknown (2000)

The amputation version of this is called apotemnophilia, it is often compared -- inaccurately, I have come to believe, and apparently I'm not the only one -- with gender dysphoria, and it is considered a frequently contagious condition which has on many occasions spread as an idée fixe through media such as internet bulletin boards, where idle visitors have read about the "condition" and thought to themselves, "Aha! ❋ Elizabeth McClung (2007)

To say that it's akin to apotemnophilia, the desire for limb amputation when the body-image is defective, is technically true, but highly misleading. ❋ Zoe Brain (2008)

Many cases though are probably low-level, and in those rare cases of intense low-level apotemnophilia, amputation of a perfectly healthy limb may be justifiable on humane grounds. ❋ Zoe Brain (2008)

Whether apotemnophilia or its healthy converse is a low-level or high level function probably varies. ❋ Zoe Brain (2008)

My introduction to them was via a year-2000 article on apotemnophilia no longer available online without a subscription which I found at the Atlantic Monthly website in 2003. ❋ Kay Olson (2007)

To the extent that transsexuality is not, in fact, a purely induced condition, a paper-thin creation of identify politics run amock providing an expression for deep-rooted depression and psychosis that is, to the extent that it is not a symptom rather than a problem, you're talking about people with a psychotic condition, a variant of apotemnophilia. ❋ Ann Althouse (2006)