This got lost in a previous thread, but I wanted to repost it as I think it's a fascinating and very important article.
I remember reading this back when it was published; and as someone with a fair bit of background in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory, it's very interesting -- from back when mainstream publications were actually able to discuss this in an evidence-based way.
I really recommend reading to the very end. It's an incredibly interesting analysis of how Body Integrity Disorder is linked with and similar to gender identity disorders; and it ends with a long discussion of why and how these created cultural ideas emerge and take root which is well worth your time.
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/
From the article:
“Not that I can see no difference between a middle-aged man rubbing Rogaine on his head every morning and a man whose discomfort in his own body is so all-consuming that he begins to think of suicide. But we shouldn't be surprised when any of these people, healthy or sick, use phrases like "becoming myself" and "I was incomplete" and "the way I really am" to describe what they feel, because the language of identity and selfhood surrounds us. It is built into our morality, our literature, our political philosophy, our therapeutic sensibility, even our popular culture. This is the way we talk now. This is the way we think. This is even the way we sell cars and tennis shoes. We talk of self-discovery, self-realization, self-expression, self-actualization, self-invention, self-knowledge, self-betrayal, and self-absorption. It should be no great revelation that the vocabulary of the self feels like a natural way to describe our longings, our obsessions, and our psychopathologies.”