Abstract
The label Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID) refers to a heterogeneous class of conditions whose sufferers desire a particular type of physical impairment. Variants of the desire for disability share the experiential “friction” elicited by the mismatch between the physical body and the subjective body. Perceived from childhood, body integrity dysphoria intensifies progressively throughout life, often leading sufferers to simulate disability and attempt to engage in self-injury. The contemporary scientific community agrees on the assumption that BID is a complex phenomenon that involves biological, social, and psychological dimensions. The present work aims to provide a preliminary qualitative overview of the desire for permanent visual impairment through novel descriptions from a recent narrative interview we conducted. The desire for blindness appears to be extremely rare. To date, there have been very few studies investigating this phenomenon. Despite these limitations, this paper aims to describe the subjective aspect of visual dysphoria, considering its similarities and differences with other variants grouped under the label of BID.
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Data Availability
The datasets analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Notes
ICD-11—Mortality and morbidity statistics (World Health Organization) https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/entity/256572629
In future studies, we plan to focus more specifically on the ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender Identity’ categories to provide a clearer description of sample characteristics.
ICD-11—Mortality and morbidity statistics (World Health Organization) https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/entity/256572629
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and analysis were performed by Alessandro Capodici and Giovanni Pennisi. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Alessandro Capodici and reviewed by Antonino Pennisi. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Capodici, A., Pennisi, G. & Pennisi, A. Looking for blindness: first-hand accounts of people with BID. Phenom Cogn Sci (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-022-09883-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-022-09883-x