Apotemnophilia


When I was younger, I remember my father saying to me: I’d cut off my arm for you Sweetie if I could change…(whatever little girl problem I was having at the time).

I remember thinking, wow, I hope that isn’t true. That would be asking a bit much from someone just so I’d get to be a cheerleader or hall monitor or get a date for the dance, whatever it was that at the time was so important to me .

It was an uncomfortable thought: someone would be willing to amputate a limb willingly in exchange for some social gain on my part.

I also remember my father coming home with a pot roast and telling my mother: this cost me an arm and a leg. I remember looking at him very carefully. He had both arms and legs, so I realized this was just an expression.

Just an expression for my father, but for other people in the world it is an obsession. The strong psycho-sexual desire to have a limb amputated for no other reason than the person’s desire to have it done is called apotemnophilia.

http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~ronald/393/393-New-way-mad.htm

The above link will take you to an article I read over four years ago in the Atlantic Monthly --

A NEW WAY TO BE MAD , By: Elliott, Carl, Atlantic Monthly, 10727825, Dec2000, Vol. 286, Issue 6

Talking about people who modify their bodies, whether it's tattoos, piercings, breast implants or liposuction got me thinking about the morality, legality, ethics and limits of body modification.

You can say: No surgeon in his right mind would or should amputate a healthy limb, just because the person wants to be an amputee. That's a sickness. Yet a quote from the article shows another side to this issue:

And to be honest, haven't surgeons made the human body fair game? You can pay a
surgeon to suck fat from your thighs, lengthen your penis, augment your breasts,
redesign your labia, even (if you are a performance artist) implant silicone
horns in your forehead or split your tongue like a lizard's. Why not amputate a
limb?

Where is the line drawn? Penises are amputated in male to female sex-reassignment surgery. Breasts are amputated freely by surgeons in female to male sex-reassignment surgery.

People who are desperate to be an amputee will do amazing things to remove the offending limb, including sawing off their own arm or leg without the benefit of anesthesia.

So, what do you think? Should surgeons perform elective amputation for patients who see two arms and two legs as one too many?

I'd give my right arm to know your opinions and thoughts. (not really)