Posted on 06/17/2018 8:35:47 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Forget extreme plastic surgery, tattoos and piercings - a minority are taking body modification to the next level - by voluntarily cutting off their own limbs.
A body modifier has exclusively revealed how his "extra" limbs feel alien, and has resorted to the drastic measure of self-mutilation - because he actually want to be disabled.
Dr. Michael First, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, has led investigations into this bizarre and extremely rare psychiatric condition which he is calling body integrity identity disorder (BIID).
Also known as amputee identity disorder, it gives people a fierce desire to rid themselves of perfectly healthy limbs.
Daily Star Online speaks exclusively to BIID sufferer Howard Bull, 54.
“I had been experimenting with crippling my toes for a few years - breaking, freezing, and smashing them”, he said.
“I broke my big toe last May after binding it a lot with a bandage then hitting it with a hammer.
“I never let it heal, and by July I had to go to the hospital because the pain was unbearable.”
However, not to be dissuaded, Howard set to work on his second toe.
“I froze it twice with keyboard cleaner and crushed it with a vice before additionally dislocating it - the pain it is part of the process.
“And now I am working on my third toe - it is bent at an angle towards where the others used to be.”
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Extreme elective surgery is a turn on for some Facebook WEIRD: Extreme elective surgery is a huge turn on for some.
“I had been experimenting with crippling my toes for a few years - breaking, freezing, and smashing them” BIID sufferer Howard Bull
And he admits to having a grisly goal: “What I really want is to lose my left leg high above my knee.”
Asked about the condition’s cause, he replies: “I believe I’ve always had BIID, but I do remember a trigger - I was around 10 when I saw an old Vincent Price movie, which showed a guy who lost all his limbs one by one and I thought ‘how fascinating.’”
Dr. First is among a small group of psychologists and psychiatrists who are trying to define the disorder, understand its origins and decide whether to include it in the encyclopaedic bible of psychiatry as a fully-fledged disease.
The idea of having extreme elective surgery, even when it involves mutilation or removal of healthy tissue, has met at least some acceptance in cases like sex reassignment, or cosmetic surgery for those who hate their noses or breasts even when those body parts are objectively fine.
But an obsessive desire for a limb amputation - one that drives people to cut off healthy arms and legs - tests the tolerance of even the most open-minded.
The disorder has led some to injure themselves with guns or chain saws in desperate efforts to force surgical amputations.
And some have even been known to lay across train tracks to achieve their ambitions.
The future looks bleak for suffers, explains Dr. First: “It remains extremely rare for people with BIID to seek help from any health practitioner because of the awareness that the medical profession has little help to offer.
"These people don't feel that it's a limb that needs to be removed because it's ugly or defective in any way, they just feel like it's extra," said Dr First, who has studied the rare disorder for more than 15 years.
The disorder has led some to injure themselves Facebook OBSESSION: The disorder has led some to injure themselves with guns or chain saws
"It's just a sense of discomfort and they just feel like it's not right having it there", he said.
But the stigma attached to the condition - which has been likened to body dysmorphia and even transgenderism - has led to dozens suffering in silence for years.
Dr First said: "The people I've interviewed with this condition suffer tremendously.
"They spend so much time thinking about it, they are preoccupied, their life is unsettled, and after they get the surgery, they appear to be perfectly normal again."
Whether it's the legs, the arms, the eyes, or the genitals that feel "alien" to a person, the cure is not to cut them off.
Doctors who would do amputations or sex/gender modification to people who hate their own bodies, are acting unethically, and ought to (at least) lose their licenses. I think they should be charged with aggravated mayhem.
As for the BIID and Trans sufferers themselves: they need psychotherapy, not self-maiming or surgical mutilation.
Actually, they need locked up.
Either that, or we can try to convince them that cutting off their own heads is somehow in their own best interest. At least we can keep their DNA out of the gene pool that way.
So he ‘identifies’ with the toeless. Wow.
Patients used to have to travel overseas for sex reassignment surgery. American doctors wouldn't perform them. It was considered a violation of their Hippocratic Oath.
These days I don't know if this is still the case. A doctor today in America is likely to face his reputation and practice destroyed as "transphobic" for refusing to cut someone's dick off.
When you accommodate insanity more insanity comes out of the woodwork.
So it’s cheaper to cut and be done than to treat the mental disorder, which could last for the rest of their lives.
Now I know why the gov wants to push the fag bit.
It’s cheaper to pretend they’re normal.
Obvious sign of demonic possession.
Mental illness is a terrible thing
behavior modification and bf skinner were thrown out because he was not politically correct.
But part of his research is valid.
MODDIEPHOBE! MODDIEPHOBE!. . .Its MODDIE, we are body modifiers and proud members of the LGBTQ & M community, not self-mutilators. . MODDIEPHOBES!! (actually, come to think of it, this might not be satire at all.)
As a recent amputee (my wife also) you don’t know how crazy this sounds. I would give almost anything to have my or my wife’s leg back. Unbelievable.
When you can get bennies for disability and prime parking spots and so on I expect the “condition” is going to be much more common than it was in say, 1760.
imprinting is part of Gods design. These people have been exposed to something at just the right readiness moment.
This is why porn and perversion with our youth is so dangerous.
This missing limb thing has been in prior research traced back imprinting.
Behaviors are complex but can be modified.
The only effective treatment for someone wishing to remove limbs is removal of the frontal lobe of the brain.
So he ‘identifies’ with the toeless. Wow.
He’s just tired of “toeing” the line.
You know, if some SW Company executive sells his firm to Google for $200M, or something, and has pockets bursting with cash, and wants to pay a surgeon for mutilation, that’s his business. Or if Daddy died and left you with a lot of dough, go have your leg cut off. I don’t care.
But why should any insurance company pay for this?
Why should any government money pay for this?
Cash on the barrelhead. If you have a pile of cash and can find a surgeon, fine. But it seems to me that a lot of these people are not contributing to society, they’re just using my money to mutilate themselves. No thank you.
I really do not have a problem with death being the result of these people mutilating themselves. I mean, what are we supposed to do convince them that their arm is a natural appendage to their species? I mean just because 6 billion other people have arms doesn’t mean that they should, right? Or am I somehow Mistating science to support my fascist agenda?
Yet he continues to enjoy the pain it seems.
You CANNOT fix retarded.
The body-modifying doctors would probably say "Yeah, if you think you're too fat, you're too fat" and "treat" her by giving her a gastric bypass!!!
BTW after a couple of years of counseling and coaching, she seems to be OK now. Still slender but in the normal range. Thank God.
Yeah you can, but it ain’t easy. Anorexics are similar: they can be turned around, but it takes time, patience and determination.
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