Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) is characterized by the intense desire for some form of body impairment. Most often sufferers report wanting a healthy limb to be amputated. Currently most professionals classify this strange wish as an identity disturbance, but several BIID affected persons also speak of a sexual component when describing their desire for an amputation. In contrast to BIID, "mancophilia" (also referred to as deformation fetishism, acrotomophilia, or amelotatism) is a form of paraphilia. Those with this condition are sexually aroused by people with a physical impairment as such as an amputation. In this pilot-study we investigated the differences between BIID and mancophilia with a self-report questionnaire, which asked 36 participants (18 with BIID, 18 with mancophilia) about their sexual preferences. The results showed a considerable overlap between the sexual preferences of people with BIID and those of people with mancophilia. BIID-participants self-reported an erotic preference for people with disabilities and, overall, a cluster-analysis resulted in three observable groups: Cluster-I, BIID with a strong sexual component (61.1%); Cluster-II, BIID with a moderate sexual component (16.7%); and Cluster-III, BIID with low or no sexual component (22.2%). However, the erotic fascination for one's own amputation was only found in BIID afflicted persons and did not occur in people with mancophilia. Only the wish for an own handicap allows a strict differentiation between those two syndromes. In summary, these preliminary findings suggest that an erotic component seems to be a frequent part of the identity disorder BIID.
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