Via Boing Boing: ‘In the book The Man Who Wasn’t There, Anil Ananthaswamy explores mysteries of self, including the weirdness of autoscopic phenomena, a kind of hallucination in which you are convinced that you are having an out-of-body experience or face to face with your non-existent twin. From a BBC feature based on one of … Continue reading Psychological disorder causes you to hallucinate your doppelgänger

Metapsychology review: “Cutting to the Core, edited by David Benatar, deals with ethical issues surrounding some of the most controversial surgeries in practice. Discussed are male circumcision and female genital cutting, sex assignment and reassignment, conjoined twin separation, limb and face transplantation, cosmetic surgery, and placebo surgery. The book is organized into six parts, each … Continue reading Exploring the Ethics of Contested Surgeries

I have written before, here (“A New Way to be Mad”; scroll down or use your browser’s search function to find ‘apotemnophilia’) (2000) and here (“Costing an Arm and a Leg”; ditto) (2003), about apotemnophilia. It is back in the news because of this Guardian article, but it seems it has a less tongue-tying name … Continue reading I Won’t Be Happy Until I Lose My Legs

‘If Armin Meiwes gets off on the insanity degree, I’ll eat my…’ On trial in Germany, cannibal says victim was willing. Meiwes says that being an only child yearning for a younger brother transmuted itself into an obsession with wishing to consume someone to incorporate them into him and bind them to him forever, according … Continue reading Annals of Depravity (obviously):

On the occasion of a new documentary about the subject, philosopher of medicine Carl Elliott writes in Slate about apotemnophilia. “The victims of a growing mental disorder are obsessed with amputation.” Apotemnophilics at times succeed in obtaining a medically unjustified amputation of a healthy limb either from a sympathetic surgeon or after intentionally damaging a … Continue reading Costing an Arm and a Leg —

Castration ‘Doctor’ Committed No Crime? Shades of my coverage awhile back of apotemnophilia, this 29 year-old unlicensed surgeon may be satisfying men’s sexual fetishes by voluntarily castrating them. Yahoo! News

A New Way to Be Mad (Caution: the referenced article has graphic details not for the squeamish) Carl Elliott, a philosopher of psychiatry, with a medical degree, writes a long reflection on the growing epidemic of apotemnophilia, a psychological malady in which people seek the amputation of one or more of their limbs without medical … Continue reading