Have you guys heard of these people? They actually go to doctors to have one of their limbs cut off, FOR NO REASON!!!

http://www.amputee-online.com/amputee/wannabee.html

The Apotemnophile
(or wannabee)

An Amputee's perspective

Ian Gregson

Apotemnophilia: a paraphilia of the stigmatic/eligibilic type in which sexuerotic arousal and facilitation or attainment of orgasm and dependent upon oneself being an amputee [from the Greek, apo, from + temnien, to cut = - philia]. An apotemnophile becomes fixated on carrying out a self-contrived amputation, or obtaining one in a hospital.

People who want to be amputees ? Sounds too weird to be true doesn't it ?

Well it is true. There are people who spend most of their lives wanting to become an amputee.

Some are successful, some go to great lengths to become an amputee, some over estimate the powers that be and end up dead.

If you are an amputee reading this you are probably shaking your head or maybe even upset by the existence of the apotemnophile.

You are not alone. Many amputees cannot understand the mind of the apotemnophile. Why would anyone want to be an amputee ?

The existence of apotemnophiles cannot be denied. Whilst they are far rarer than the acrotomophile (devotee). A small number of amputees in society are realised apotemnophiles.

Apotemnophiles are not failed suicides or people suffering from "Munchausen's syndrome". (Munchausen's patients "collect" surgical interventions in various hospitals. They can only live through the interest brought to them by the medical corporation).

Apotemnophiles typically do not want to end their life, moreover they want to begin a new life as an amputee. The reasons for this are due to a sexual nature rather than the need to experience medical procedures as in Munchausens Syndrome.

There is also a distinct difference between persons who have obtained amputations via their own means due to a lack of cooperation from the medical community. There is a famous amputee from the UK who after many years of pain and suffering decided to lie down on a railway track and drink himself into unconsciousness. When he awoke he was an amputee. This person was frustrated enough with the medical community to take these drastic steps in order to cure his pain.

And although "pain" is one of the main ingredients of the apotemnophiles need to become an amputee, it is the pain of unfulfilled sexual desire or other inner pain that drives them to their ultimate act.

Many "wannabees" act out the role of being an amputee. They will tape up their ankle to the thier thigh and roam the streets on a pair of crutches. Amputation is not the only medical condition that has its "wannabees". There are also "leg brace" wannabees, these people also "pretend" to have a disability.

Regardless of why "wannabees" are motivated, they do exist. The humane question would be should these people be allowed to amputate a body part in order to be happy ? Inevitably one must ask are these people better off as amputees or as fully limbed individuals ?

As amputees it is hard to understand why anyone would consciously choose to be an amputee because very few of us are amputees by choice. Yet if becoming an amputee made a person happy or even mentally stable (possibly for the first time in their lives) should we stand in their way to such happiness or stability ?

If ever we were faced with an opportunity to try and convince a "wannabee" not to become an amputee, what would we tell them ? Should we try and convince them that life as an amputee would be worse than their life as it is ? Will becoming an amputee stop the voices in their heads.

After all, is life as an amputee all that bad in comparision to a lifetime of taking heavy medication ?

Reality is an amputee would do all that is possible to prevent any new amputees from being created. But when it comes down to the wire it is the individual that makes the choice and sometimes despite the best advice we humans are prone to going our own way.

Yeah, they had a dude like this on Nip/Tuck. These folks need to be committed.

i had a girlfriend who would only date me if i could give her 10 hard inches


i had to go to a doctor and have him cut 3 inches off

i remember watching a documentary on something similar once, it was this 12 year old british girl who was convinced she would never get to the height required to get her future dream job, a stewardess. So she convinced her parents to go see a doctor who was willing to break her legs in multiple places, stretch them out and let it heal all back again so she could gain like 3 or 4 inches. I'm kinda wondering what happened to her, i saw this thing about 6 years ago

well, they have a reason, it is just not one that we all quite understand.

to have a limb removed for mental health reasons seems, well, crazy. but people have elective sex change surgery all the time. the only differnece between a sex change and an elective amputation is the lifetime of medical care needed i.e. wheelchair, prothetics, OT, PT services etc.

and that opens up all kinds of cans of worms: who is going to pay for the surgery and subsequent equiptment/therapy? is the person going to be able to work after this surgery? will this inspire copy cat elective amputations for other reasons than the rare syndrome?

the movie vernon, fl. is about a town known for people cutting off their own limbs to fraud insurance companies.

I saw a documentary on this once. I don't know why this article talks so much about a 'sexual' desire linked with this condition, no one metioned in in the documentary. Most of them just had long term feelings that a cetian part of their leg or whatever wasn't supposed to be there. Some of them had had the feelings since childhood. A few of them even went so far as to bend their legs up at the knee and wrap it tight. One guy buried his leg in dry ice until the skin died and the doctors had no choice but to operate. Another shot himself in the leg.
Of all of the 'successful' ones that they were following, only one sort of regretted what he had done.


It's strange, but kind of fascinating. Maybe it's left over from a past life or a form of annorexia. Maybe it's no different than someone hating the size of their breasts or ass or calves or whatever else they can inhance/dehance these days. Who knows what goes on in some people's brains.

This is what many "little people" have done.

Yeah, I've seen a little person that had it done. Once she had gone through her operations she was 2 inches taller than I am.
And I'm not a little person, just short.

i saw this on dateline or something. the guy who sat in his car with his legs in dry ice up to his knees was the sickest. then he drove himself to the emergency room.

I say, let them keep try to do it themselves. They'll kill themselves being stupid, and we'll improve the genetic code!

I should start a business chopping off limbs for these folks.

$29.95

this would be a lot less messy with light sabers.

Sounds like a great band name.

I had no idea it was a sexual thing. I thought it was a body dysmorphic disorder-type thing. Like Michael Jackson (essentially) chopping off his nose.

However, the the amputee desire is much more internally manifested and disturbed. Someone made fun of Michael's big nose, so he became obsessed with shrinking it. Little did he realize life would be exactly the same even with a small nose. Most likely no one teased the amputee wannabes about their arms or anything, so their desire came from within.

Didn't some guy finally get his leg amputated, yet the weird desires did NOT stop for him? I think the pathology of their disease is not the same as people with gender identity disorder. The amputee wannabes are not cured after they get something amputated. Oftentimes transgendered folks are very very happy with changing genders.

I can't quite figure out if they focus on being an amputee as a person or if they just focus on the body party exclusively.

Like I desire to live the life of an amputee or I desire to get rid of this dead weight leg, it'll feel great....

oh and I don't think most of these people will be cured by having an amputation, so it should not be allowed unless a team of therapists think it will help him or her.

friends? maybe?, a family, maybe? but a whole town?

That's the way I see it.

I've seen a couple of shows about this (my wife will watch any show about freaks that the Discovery Channel can find), and I'm of the opinion that this desire to amputate is probably not dissimilar to the chemistry that causes a person to want to have a sex change. All judgments aside, I think that is what doctors would find in the neurochemistry of these people if they did extensive research.

(My judgment is that they're all fucking batshit)

Just because you can track it to their neurochemistry, does that mean you should lop off people's arms?

I think you should treat the chemical imbalance. No disrespect to those who have had them, but I generally feel the same way about sex changes. I don't know if I can actually make that statement, but I did.