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What Happens When Your Brain Says You Don't Exist
- arielweisberg 11y agoFascinating that amputating a functional leg could be considered ethical in light of a mental disorder. I am interested in what the road to getting that procedure done looks like.
- bza 11y agoThe phrase to google is "elective amputation".
- arielweisberg 11y agoThanks that was informative.
- Zikes 11y agoIt must be particularly difficult to relate to those of us that don't have that disorder. When the patient in the article described his leg as foreign, or that his "soul doesn't extend into that part" of his leg, my first thought was that surely amputees would feel similarly about their prosthetics, but by all reports a good prosthetic has a positive effect on those amputees. Maybe they feel more like the limb is a parasite? If I imagine that I had a large parasite permanently attached to my body, I could begin to understand the desperation to have it removed.
- spacehome 11y agoIrony would be if this patient got a prosthetic leg.
- Zikes 11y agoThat's a question I'd really love to have answered, actually.
- Dylan16807 11y agoI still can't figure it out. I would be overjoyed to have a parasite that feeds off me and acts as an extra (reasonably-placed) limb.
- oh_sigh 11y agoWell, that is what would happen if I ever got gender reassignment surgery...
- zdean 11y agoExcept that your gender reassignment request would probably not be thought of as resulting from a mental disorder. Not agreeing or disagreeing with the amputation...just pointing out a difference from this example.
- JonathonW 11y agoGender dysphoria or gender identity disorder is an accepted diagnosis in the medical community for individuals expressing discomfort with their gender as assigned at birth, and sex reassignment surgery (after psychotherapy) is considered as one possible treatment.
- bobcostas55 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria
- dragonwriter 11y ago> Except that your gender reassignment request would probably not be thought of as resulting from a mental disorder. Gender reassignment procedures are commonly part of the treatment for gender identity disorder, which is why they are considered medically-necessary procedures, to which people for whom the state is responsible for medical care (e.g., prisoners) are entitled.
- kentrado 11y agoHow is it a treatment?
- oh_sigh 11y agoSorry, I was making a crass joke about the size of my penis. Presumably I wouldn't get my leg amputated for a gender reassignment surgery, but maybe my third leg...
- jmnicolas 11y agoNo this is criminal : the Russians had pretty good results with this kind of mental disorder by making the patients fast, yes you read me well, just fasting. But it's too simple and there's no money to be made of it. So they're going to cut legs from people that could be saved by fasting. I'd offer a source but it's a book in French from a journalist that studied fasting and went to Russia since during the Soviet times they made a lot of researches on fasting.
- o_____________o 11y agoIf it was a profit issue, there would be money to be made from treating a patient for the consultation and duration of the fast. Not everything is a Big Industry conspiracy.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago> but it's a book in French Some of us read French.
- jmnicolas 11y ago"Le jeûne, une nouvelle thérapie ?" ISBN-13: 978-2707175571 If you read Russian (since your nick is Pavel I thought you might) I'm sure you could find better sources than that.
- DanBC 11y agoEngland has a national health service. So that NHS has two options: 1) put someone through a fast. (Cheap - about £1000 per week). Then provide some talking therapy for some time. 2) amputating a leg. (Just the amputation is going to be between £8,000 and £16,000), followed by considerable physiotherapy and prosthetic legs. Here the NHS wants the cheapest effective option, not the more expensive option. If starvation works you should probably send the evidence to NICE.
- jmnicolas 11y agoCome on, your NHS is probably as badly run than my Sécurité Sociale, and allergic to consider better alternatives if it's not big pharma approved. For the record I tried fasting for 2 weeks and it didn't do anything for me (I don't have dimorphism though). However we need scientific studies to either prove or disprove the benefits of fasting so we don't have to debate on just opinions but facts.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoSticking an icepick up someone's nose, into their brain, and swirling it around in there used to be considered ethical as well.
- baddox 11y agoI guess that depends whether you consider the amputation treatment for the disorder or a negative symptom of the disorder.
- Qantourisc 11y agoSo these people feel like their leg is prosthetic in a way ? I'd still be tempted to keep that well-functional-free prosthetic. Then again, we are talking mental disorders of course.
- DanBC 11y agoBBC Radio Four has a programme "Inside the Ethics Committee". That takes real world cases and talks to people involved, and also a panel of ethicists. It's fascinating. Recently they covered a case of a woman active in sports who suffered a knee injury, and several failed surgeries to repair the damage. That left her unable to participate in sport. She began to hate the leg and wanted an amputation. (Did she get it? I won't spoil the programme). That particular episode is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b061tfmp http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b061tfmp The series' page is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007xbtd http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007xbtd This kind of programming is excellent. It's something the BBC does very well. Other episodes cover equally tough cases, so be a bit careful. There are some episodes that ralk about suicide, for example.
- 7erb 11y agoEverything that defines the self such as experiences, thoughts, and even our physical appearance is ephemeral and intangible. There is no particular thing to hold on to. It's all in a state of flux. That may seem obvious, but to conceptual thinkers like myself, experiencing non-duality (no-self) and "Thusness" (as Alan Watts calls it) is difficult. It's why I designed subliminal posters for meditating: http://zission.com http://zission.com Here is a specific poster for nonduality http://zission.com/product/words-inside-outside/ http://zission.com/product/words-inside-outside/
- colordrops 11y agoThe text on the poster is unreadable, at least on my Galaxy S4.
- 7erb 11y agoThe words are almost transparent for a reason. When the words are hard to read, the conscious mind becomes preoccupied with the image and the message imprints directly to the unconscious. It's a technique known as Critical Factor Bypass. EDIT: This comment is becoming transparent too. Your conscious mind will ignore them because they are hard to read, but your subconscious mind is about to make a choice... about deepening your meditation... and feeling a growing sense of confidence... about buying my posters...
- pavel_lishin 11y ago[citation needed], preferably in a format both my conscious and unconscious mind can parse.
- 7erb 11y agoCritical Factor Bypass is a well known technique in hypnotherapy, and I could provide tons of links. That said, it's an experimental project and has been extremely beneficial for me. I thought I'd share.
- nirmel 11y agoThis made me think that believing in a self is evolutionarily advantageous, but perhaps illusory. Those who don't associate their body and life as their "own" in some metaphysical sense will be substantially more prone to dying before reproducing.
- SilasX 11y agoHow is someone who believes in self observationally distinguishable from one that doesn't? How does not believing in self prohibit certain actions?
- kordless 11y agoHow is someone who believes in private cloud, with zero remote management, observationally distinguishable from one that is OK using 100% public cloud? The answer is related to how they establish trust within their organization and themselves based on their use cases. Some Tibetan Buddhist monks practice a type of mindfulness that consists of imagining bits and pieces of their bodies are being slowly dissolved or devoured, until nothing is left. They trust their 'souls' are actually a part of a higher consciousness that they seek to become aware of through their actions, and death. These monks definitely prohibit certain actions to attain their intent. Drugs, sexual desire, right thinking, right action, right mindfulness, etc. You can totally tell the difference from them and someone who isn't considered (at least by Buddhists) to be enlightened.
- SilasX 11y agoExcept that someone can purport to disbelieve in self while doing all the things they prohibit :-p Plus, whatever animals you don't think believe in self.
- MichaelCrawford 11y agohttp://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-disorder/dissociation.html http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-disorder/d... When I suffered from Solipsism, it wasn't that I felt _I_ didn't exist, but that I felt _you_ didn't exist. You might think that as quite cool but it is soul-crushingly lonely. Four other Solipsists mailed me after they stumbled upon Living with Schizoaffective Disorder, to thank me for curing their own soul-crushing loneliness. Perhaps really I did not. Perhaps we are not alone in the Universe. Perhaps there is just us five.
- 8sigma 11y agoso many comments are downvoted.Rare thing on hn.