Posted on 01/11/2004 5:44:30 PM PST by Federalist 78
One morning, retired architect George Boyer picks up a shotgun, sits down on the grass near his Florida home and ties a tourniquet tightly around his upper left thigh. Then he purposely blows the leg to shreds, forcing doctors to amputate the limb.
For the first time in his life, he says, he feels "complete."
Boyer is a voluntary amputee, a man with a disorder so rare, mysterious and under documented that doctors are only beginning to quantify and classify it.
Body Integrity Identity DisorderBody Integrity Identity Disorder
, or BIID, is a psychological condition in which the individual requests an elective amputation. Individuals with this condition experience the persistent desire to have their body physically match the idealized image they have of themselves. This desire forces individuals to deal with the paradox of losing one or more major limbs (i.e. arm[s] or leg[s]) to become whole. In their minds, "Less is more".
Costing an Arm and a Leg - The victims of a growing mental ...
Gilbert's sensitive film allows wannabes to speak for themselves. Many are so articulate and likable that no matter how difficult you find it to understand their desire, you will come away from the film with sympathy for their strange predicament. Yet perhaps the most disturbing figures in Whole are the clinicians. Even as the wannabes admit how baffling they find their own desires, the mental health professionals in the film speak with absolute confidence. The film features a social worker and clinical psychologist who have counseled Boyer in Florida, as well as Michael First, an academic psychiatrist at Columbia University, who has organized several meetings of wannabes and clinicians in New York. First says that the purpose of these meetings is to "facilitate treatment" for the condition, by which he says he means surgical treatment. His apparent certainty that nothing short of amputation can help these people is underscored by ominous music and a screen shot that reads, "There are no medications or therapies known to help wannabes."
ABC13.com: Man charged after allegedly injecting people with brake fluid
Houston police say they have cracked a rather bizarre case. They have arrested a transgender they say injected other transgenders with what was supposed to be pure silicone…but it wasn't. Now one of his clients is dead.
Twenty-two-year-old Delfino Gonzales died of asphyxiation just three days after being injected in May with a substance authorities now believe was brake fluid. It's an incredibly dangerous procedure transgenders are enduring instead of paying for much more expensive plastic surgery.
Mutilation for "Mental Health", October 2003
Across the western world, a growing number of people are voluntarily getting mutilated. Some are getting their genitals surgically altered, others are having their breasts, arms, or legs cut off.
Why are they doing these things?
These individuals would make a mess - maybe even kill themselves - if they mutilated themselves. As it turns out, they almost never do. So why is society supporting their efforts? You guessed it. All for their 'mental health.'
We can readily understand good health when it comes to the body. 'Optimal health' means that there is nothing wrong with our body - we are in 'good shape' and can breathe, act, digest food, etc. without difficulty. But is there such a thing as optimal mental health? Brave New World
If Bernard lives in California, its newly-passed law will assure that his employer will have to put up with him or face a $150,000 fine. If 'she' moves to Minnesota, New Mexico, or Rhode Island, he will also be protected by equal rights laws. If 'Bernice' decides she is a lesbian, or even decides to "go straight" by having sex with a man, 'she' will have even more rights than the wife. And it is always possible that Bernice will decide to get a domestic partner - in which case 'she' will have all the benefits of marriage without his unsympathetic, narrow-minded wife!
In order to optimize his 'mental health,' everybody has to please Bernard. No sacrifice is too great for this 'victim' of his ever-growing desires. Bernard doesn't know exactly what he wants - probably never will. But in the mental health world, what he - the client - wants trumps the interests of his wife, kids, neighbors and relatives. The rest of society simply 'has to adjust' - and pay his bills.
So said the three highly trained therapists. So says Ann Landers.
This is what mental healthism has led to - the client is the most important person in the world. The mad and the dregs of society are elevated to the heights and the productive and their children have to be 're-educated to accept this reality.' And if they won't accept their re-education, they may have to be fined or imprisoned for their 'hate crime.' The Scoop on Transsexuals
What is particularly disturbing about this trend is that there is no objective reason for giving someone a 'sex-change.' Unlike removing a breast due to cancer, there is no medical indication for turning a he into a 'she,' or vice-versa. Typically, the only criterion is the desire of the patient. Some of the therapists are quite open about this:3 "In our opinion an evaluation of SRS [sexual reassignment surgery] can be made only on the basis of subjective data, because SRS is intended to solve a problem that cannot be determined objectively."
The children, the extended family - everybody else is irrelevant. The real question, they say, is 'what does Bernard need for his mental health?' And if Bernard is pleased, all the sacrifice was worth it.The Specter of Mental Healthism
A specter is haunting America - it is 'mental healthism.' As Marxism haunts economic policy, so mental healthism haunts social policy. Both of these movements claim special knowledge of 'what's wrong' and the ability to remedy what ails us. As in the last century when Marxism corrupted many a society, today many advocates of mental healthism are busily about their dismantling of traditional society. At this point in history, mental healthism is actually more dangerous than Marxism. Marxism already got its chance to perform and didn't work. Mental healthism is still growing in influence and has yet to be fully exposed as, at best, quasi-scientific.
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18 |
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It's always been with us, particularly with men sent to war. American Revolution hero George Rogers Clark undoubtedly suffered from it as did Audie Murphy (in his own words).
It doesn't affect some people. Still, when I was but a child our car slid down an icy hill into the path of a speeding freight train. We were hit and dragged down the track. I relive the entire event in my mind every time I navigate a rail crossing. Fortunately it doesn't affect me although sometimes I stop at an unguarded crossing, get out of my car, check the track in both directions thoroughly, and only then proceed on my way. So far I haven't been hit again.
It's always been with us, particularly with men sent to war. American Revolution hero George Rogers Clark undoubtedly suffered from it as did Audie Murphy (in his own words).
It doesn't affect some people. Still, when I was but a child our car slid down an icy hill into the path of a speeding freight train. We were hit and dragged down the track. I relive the entire event in my mind every time I navigate a rail crossing. Fortunately it doesn't affect me although sometimes I stop at an unguarded crossing, get out of my car, check the track in both directions thoroughly, and only then proceed on my way. So far I haven't been hit again.
LOL! "Tell me I'm not pregnant, doc!"
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