People who amputate healthy limbs find it AROUSING

People who amputate healthy limbs find it AROUSING

One of the strangest conditions psychologists have come across involves perfectly healthy people wanting to permanently and seriously maim themselves. 

Known as body identity integrity disorder (BIID) or xenomelia, it usually involves a desire to amputate a healthy limb.

Occasionally it can manifest as an urge to blind or paralyse themselves. In all cases, sufferers overwhelmingly feel their body is not complete in its current state.

Doctors are largely baffled by the disorder as they show no other psychiatric condition.

The leading thought is that BIID occurs when the brain is not able to provide an accurate plan of the body.

However a new study has now shed further light after discovering sufferers are predominantly repressed gays or religious men.

Furthermore, the new research has revealed nearly three quarters are sexually aroused by the idea of maiming themselves.

People with body identity integrity disorder are sexually excited by the idea of maiming themselves, according to researchers in the Netherlands (file)

'BIID is often accompanied by feelings and cognitions of sexual arousal, although this sexual component has been largely neglected in the recent literature,' wrote researchers from the University of Amsterdam in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

WHAT IS BODY INTEGRITY IDENTITY DISORDER? 

According to BIID.org, Body Integrity Identity Disorder is when a person’s idea of how they should look does not match their physical form.

The condition affects a small percentage of the population and is most often manifested by a desire to have an amputation of a specific body part.

Usually, the limb that the person would like to remove is actually in healthy working order and there are no physical problems with it.

The leading thought by psychologists and neurologists is that Body Integrity Identity Disorder, or BIID, occurs when the brain is not able to provide an accurate plan of the body. 

The brain sees the offending limb as being foreign and not actually a part of the person, thus the desire to have it removed. 

In the most severe cases, a person with BIID may do bodily harm to what that they would like to have removed, to necessitate an operation.

Others manage to cope with the illness by using canes and prosthetic attachments to help them feel complete.

Key findings 

The team, from the department of psychiatry at the university's Academic Medical Center, gave 80 individuals with BIID an internet-based survey.

They collected data about their demographics, medical history, and sexual characteristics.

It was found that 71 per cent of the respondents reported having sexual feelings relating to their condition.

For all sufferers, 'restoring identity' was the primary motivation for their body modification behaviour, it was found.  

Subjects with sexual feelings were 'significantly more often men, religious, and of a homosexual identity' compared with the group that did not being sexually aroused by the condition.

Subjects who got sexually aroused by it also significantly more often reported feeling an increasing intensity in their feelings over time. 

Seven of the 57 subjects with sexual motivations had self amputated, whereas none of the non-sexually motivated group did.

This study was the largest of its kind and is the first to thoroughly research sexuality in BIID, the authors said.

There were some study limitations due to the lack of face-to-face interviews with the subjects, so no clinical diagnoses could be made, they noted. 

The only two known surgeries for BIID performed 'leg ally' in the UK were in Scotland in the 1990s at an NHS hospital in Falkirk.

The surgeon ended up having to defend himself in front of an ethics committee, and a decision was taken to prevent any further operations.

Those who don’t self-amputate often end up going abroad and paying surgeons to operate illegally. 

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