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Fetish and the Brain
There's an incredibly interesting article in a recent New Yorker that merits reading. Unfortunately, it requires a subscription, but it's worth finding. The gist is this.
A neuroscientist named V D Ramachandran has had very good luck treating phantom limb pain in amputees using just a mirror. His studies extend, also, to people who have the opposite problem - they have a real limb that causes them distress, and they want it amputated.
I was struck by the description of the wannabe-amputees ("apotemnophiliacs", although I don't know why they use the -philiacs ending rather than just -phile.) Apparently, this desire always manifests itself in early childhood, and is specific, unwavering and immutable - right down to the specific spot where they want the amputation to take place.
I've always been fascinated by, and drawn to, amputations in other men, so of course I'm doubly fascinated by someone who wants one for themselves. (I certainly wouldn't, although I think I'd adjust relatively easily were I to suffer one myself since the concept doesn't freak me out like it does many people.) Although apotemnophilia is not an erotic desire, it is impossible to avoid comparing the intensely specific desire for an amputation with the intensely specific desire of a sexual orientation or fetish. It sure looks like the same class of phenomena.
The proposed explanation for this disorder is even more interesting. The brain maintains a "map" of the human body that is surprisingly literal, and Ramachandran has clever experimental evidence that strongly suggests that apotemnophilia is actually a neurological defect in that map - the undesired limb is missing from the internal image of the body, so signals from that limb have nowhere to be processed, and thus cause the patient severe distress. The article mentions that transsexuality might reflect a similar mismatch between body and brain, but doesn't go much beyond that.
On considering this interpretation, I find it very easy to imagine having this kind of mismatch and wanting something amputated because of it. And it makes me wonder if there aren't all kinds of analogous mismatches between the brain and the body, or the outside world, that are so fundamental as to be impossible to change on the brain side - one way or another, the world must be bent to fit.
Alternately, mirror therapy suggests that it's possible to reprogram the brain in simple and surprising ways. The implications for fetish and sexual orientation are likewise kind of interesting. While the idea of a "cure for homosexuality" is almost always offered from a hostile perspective, and the question of "would you take a pill..." is something I'd always answer with a resounding "no", there is something about this brain-map reprogramming concept that is much more positive and less threatening. It identifies a real mismatch between oneself and the world and resolves it in a constructive way. If I did something like that and it happened to make me heterosexual... heh, well I guess there would be a lot of adjustment, but somehow from that perspective it seems much less distasteful.
Not feeling terribly coherent today, but it's provided a lot of food for thought.
A neuroscientist named V D Ramachandran has had very good luck treating phantom limb pain in amputees using just a mirror. His studies extend, also, to people who have the opposite problem - they have a real limb that causes them distress, and they want it amputated.
I was struck by the description of the wannabe-amputees ("apotemnophiliacs", although I don't know why they use the -philiacs ending rather than just -phile.) Apparently, this desire always manifests itself in early childhood, and is specific, unwavering and immutable - right down to the specific spot where they want the amputation to take place.
I've always been fascinated by, and drawn to, amputations in other men, so of course I'm doubly fascinated by someone who wants one for themselves. (I certainly wouldn't, although I think I'd adjust relatively easily were I to suffer one myself since the concept doesn't freak me out like it does many people.) Although apotemnophilia is not an erotic desire, it is impossible to avoid comparing the intensely specific desire for an amputation with the intensely specific desire of a sexual orientation or fetish. It sure looks like the same class of phenomena.
The proposed explanation for this disorder is even more interesting. The brain maintains a "map" of the human body that is surprisingly literal, and Ramachandran has clever experimental evidence that strongly suggests that apotemnophilia is actually a neurological defect in that map - the undesired limb is missing from the internal image of the body, so signals from that limb have nowhere to be processed, and thus cause the patient severe distress. The article mentions that transsexuality might reflect a similar mismatch between body and brain, but doesn't go much beyond that.
On considering this interpretation, I find it very easy to imagine having this kind of mismatch and wanting something amputated because of it. And it makes me wonder if there aren't all kinds of analogous mismatches between the brain and the body, or the outside world, that are so fundamental as to be impossible to change on the brain side - one way or another, the world must be bent to fit.
Alternately, mirror therapy suggests that it's possible to reprogram the brain in simple and surprising ways. The implications for fetish and sexual orientation are likewise kind of interesting. While the idea of a "cure for homosexuality" is almost always offered from a hostile perspective, and the question of "would you take a pill..." is something I'd always answer with a resounding "no", there is something about this brain-map reprogramming concept that is much more positive and less threatening. It identifies a real mismatch between oneself and the world and resolves it in a constructive way. If I did something like that and it happened to make me heterosexual... heh, well I guess there would be a lot of adjustment, but somehow from that perspective it seems much less distasteful.
Not feeling terribly coherent today, but it's provided a lot of food for thought.
no subject
Way in the back of the paper were classified ads, and every week these dudes would advertise for a "voluntary amputee."
Don't know if they ever found a woman to do so, but I eventually found a Hippie that was loose enough to shower with me...once.
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Have you ever visited www.BIID.org ? There is a ton of places one can go to discuss this and even talk with folks who have had amputations by choice.
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Why does the community dislike R's work? I can imagine many reasons - he seems awfully self-important, and these profiles tend to exclude critical perspectives, but I couldn't find anything about it on the BIID site.
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The article you read, its theory is not new with him. He has proposed this theory for several years now. I am talking of the mirror image for phantom pain management. It might work for some, but there is no one thing that works for all or even a majority. It has also been thought the degree of pain comes from how one has become an amputee. By trauma or disease and the duration of either the disease and or trauma before amputation.
But what the BIID community disagrees with is this. He states that the need for amputation is of a sexual nature, period. As I said this was several years ago that he made his comments on this and I have not really followed to see if any progression of he thoughts. It was how he stated it and his opinion that riled folks. From what I have just read of his thoughts were posted “below” in 2007 have developed a slightly different approach. But not enough.
“Apotemnophilia, or body integrity image disorder (BIID), is characterised by a feeling of mismatch between the internal feeling of how one's body should be and the physical reality of how it actually is. Patients with this condition have an often overwhelming desire for an amputation- of a specific limb at a specific level. Such patients are not psychotic or delusional, however, they do express an inexplicable emotional abhorrence to the limb they wish removed. It is also known that such patients show a left-sided preponderance for their desired amputation. Often they take drastic action to be rid of the offending limb. Given the left-sided bias, emotional rejection and specificity of desired amputation, we suggest that there are clear similarities to be drawn between BIID and somatoparaphrenia. In this rare condition, which follows a right parietal stroke, the patient rejects (usually) his left arm as "alien". We go on to hypothesis that a dysfunction of the right parietal lobe is also the cause of BIID. We suggest that this leads to an uncoupling of the construct of one's body image in the right parietal lobe from how one's body physically is. This hypothesis would be amenable to testing by response to cold-water vestibular caloric stimulation, which is known to temporarily treat somatoparaphrenia. It could also be investigated using functional brain imaging and skin conductance response. If correct our hypothesis not only suggests why BIID arises, but also, in caloric stimulation a therapeutic avenue for this chronic and essentially untreatable condition.”
Dr. First who is the leading Dr. in this study is the one who coined it as BIID, body integrity image disorder. Ramachandran still uses apotemnophilia and this is telling in that he is unfortunately, like many other people, appears to be confusing the conditions. That there is a difference between apotemnophilia (arousal at the idea of being an amputee), and BIID, which is a body image issue and doesn't have a sexual component as a prime factor.
I have met several folks who have had or brought about amputations by choice. I would say 95 percent were not motivated by sexual need. The five percent left over had some fetish component, but it was not the whole of it. All but one that I have gotten to know once they have become an amputee said they wish they had done it sooner in life. The need for the amputation goes away for the most part and they feel free to live life without that constant nagging that held them back from advancing in other areas of life.
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Here you can read what was said without having to sign in.
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101788221