“We didn’t ask for this pain”

One man with a phantom limb writes: “[s]ometimes [I] feel as if the fingers on my amputated hand are moving uncontrollably, which is both extremely painful and embarrassing” (Nortvedt and Engelsrud 2014, 602). And in his self-published book Amputation on Request (2011), a man with BIID named Alex Mensaert explains that the “need for amputation is an obsession that keeps a wannabe the whole day busy [sic] till he gets his wanted limb(s) amputated” (44). ¹ Mensaert later states that the vast majority of the individuals he spoke to who are determined to self-amputate are aware that 80% of (BIID) amputees suffer from “severe phantom pains”, and that “their answer to the question [as to] what could be the reason they were not perfectly happy immediately [after amputation] is clearly; [sic] ‘because we didn’t ask for this pain’ ” (Mensaert 2011, 54). Here Mensaert is referring both to the torment of BIID and the phantom pain after the amputation. Already there is a certain paradox: the BIID sufferer desires to be in the physical shape of those with phantom limbs (missing limbs), and those with phantom limbs desire to be in the physical shape of those with apotemnophilia (with all limbs intact). Although they oppose each other in this way and involve seemingly different types of pain (the physically generated phantom versus the psychically orientated BIID limb), they undergo a very similar struggle, and, in a sense, mirror one another. Individuals with both syndromes want to amputate what feels like an extra limb.