Article - quotes for discussion

[Bortles]

Came across this article elsewhere on MN today. It dates from 2000 and would certainly not have been written in the same way now as some turns of phrase are looked upon scathingly but I found it full of very useful concepts and perspectives for discussion of identity issues. Just didn't want it to disappear, so posting here: It's ostensibly about people who want to be amputees, but widens pretty quickly into looking at identity, desire, the role of the internet etc.
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/

Thanks, Bortles - very relevant! I can get over the phraseology, but of course it would be an excuse for some to dismiss the whole article. Have you shared it elsewhere?

I've read it before. It's absolutely FASCINATING. What I can't understand is why it's only bad to cut some healthy body parts off and not others.

BBC Horizon did a documentary about the same time, called Complete Obsession. I watched it a couple of years ago. This is the only place I could find it. It's very good but it is so hard to understand where these people are coming from.

m.ok.ru/video/281953962725

Such an interesting article. I think I’ll watch that documentary too.

This is so interesting, thank you for posting it.

It is a long article covering a great deal but I was struck by the current relevance of these paragraphs near the end in light of the recent surge of girls wanting to change their identity.

“Ian Hacking uses the term "semantic contagion" to describe the way in which publicly identifying and describing a condition creates the means by which that condition spreads. He says it is always possible for people to reinterpret their past in light of a new conceptual category. And it is also possible for them to contemplate actions that they may not have contemplated before.“

@ScrollingLeaves you might be interested in Sleeping Beauties and It's All In Your Head by Suzanne O'sullivan. She looks at psychosomatic illnesses/psychogenic illnesses/funtional neurological disorders including ones that happen to a group e.g. multiple girls in a school having fainting fits. Very interesting stuff

@GoodieMoomin thank you for your suggestion, I’ll look those up.

Agree about semantic contagion Scrolling. I was also struck by the conclusion about drugs being tested but surgical and psychological interventions not.