Anil Ananthaswamy's The Man Who Wasn't There has nothing to do with the Coen brothers movie. It's a book on neuroscience, a topic that interests me. And the second chapter is interesting. It's just kind of hard to get through. The subject is body identity integrity disorder (BIID), and if you're curious about what that is, here, that should tie you over.
So there are descriptions of self-harm and some borderline surgical procedures. Nothing too graphic, but it still made me woozy.
Now I know transgender people. There's a Starbucks around here where at one time you might walk in and most of the staff on duty seemed to be trans. So is thinking you're an amputee wrongly placed in a body with all its limbs comparable? I would think it's different, but who knows? Maybe in a few years I'll be desperately denying ever having written this blog post.
So there are descriptions of self-harm and some borderline surgical procedures. Nothing too graphic, but it still made me woozy.
Now I know transgender people. There's a Starbucks around here where at one time you might walk in and most of the staff on duty seemed to be trans. So is thinking you're an amputee wrongly placed in a body with all its limbs comparable? I would think it's different, but who knows? Maybe in a few years I'll be desperately denying ever having written this blog post.
2 comments:
That is definitely a pretty disturbing disorder for someone to have, one I'd never heard of despite having worked in medicine for as long as I did. I do remember, though, that we did have a few patients in urology who would cut their sutures or reopen wounds particularly after kidney donation surgery. Made me wonder if that was the only way they felt they could get attention.
As far as trans and the associated surgeries it's hard to say. Guys would call urology thinking that was the logical place to get the project underway and would always be surprised to be told they had to see psychiatrists and endocrinologists first. After that it's plastic surgery with urology coming in last to rearrange the plumbing.
People are strange as somebody once said..
The behavior of the patients in kidney donation sounds perverse enough. Offhand I'd say it's more like Munchausen's syndrome. If they wanted attention they might have figured it was worth it to cause themselves some actual harm, provided there were staff there to keep them intact. Of course a lot of organ donations involve people who are family, so there could be all sorts of weird dynamics there.
It makes sense that candidates for gender reassignment would go through psychiatric consultation. It's all very well if this is actually what you want, but it must be difficult and traumatic if someone has second thoughts.
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