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Deep Learning Technology: Sebastian Arnold, Betty van Aken, Paul Grundmann, Felix A. Gers and Alexander Löser. Learning Contextualized Document Representations for Healthcare Answer Retrieval. The Web Conference 2020 (WWW'20)
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Acrotomophilia (from the Greek ἀκρότομος "having the top cut off" (from ἄκρον "akron" "extremity" and -τομος "-tomos" from τέμνω "temno" "I cut") and φιλία "philia" "love") is a paraphilia in which an individual expresses strong sexual interest in amputees. It is a counterpart to "apotemnophilia", the sexual interest in "being" an amputee.
Acrotomophiles may be attracted to amputees because they like the way they look or they may view the amputee’s stump as a phallic object which can be used for sexual pleasure.A small number of Acrotomophiles may enjoy the idea of dominating the amputee during couples play and they may also become aroused with the thought of having to take care of an amputee.
Apotemnophia / Body Integrity Disorder (BIID) is a is a rare, infrequently studied and highly secretive condition in which there is a mismatch between the mental body image and the physical body. Apotemnomphilia is characterized by an intense desire for amputation of a limb. Currently BIID is not included in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases 11 or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV. It is often not known to surgeons, neurologists and psychiatrists. BIID individuals typically avoid healthcare and often act out their desires by pretending they are disabled or perform actual self-amputation.
A 2012 study concluded, based on interviews with 54 individuals, that the main rationale for their desire for body modification (amputation) was to feel complete or to feel satisfied inside. Based on the results of the survey, researchers concluded that psychotherapy was often supportive, but did not help diminishing BIID symptoms. Individuals reported that antidepressants were helpful in reducing depressive symptoms related to BIID, but that antipsychotics were not. Actual amputation of the limb was effective in all 7 cases who had surgical treatment.
Surgeons are placed in a difficult situation when apotemnophiles confront them about their situation. A surgeon or a medical professional will have to make the decision between amputating a perfectly normal limb or allowing his or her patients to remain unhappy. Whether the medical professional performs this surgery has not been defined as "allowed" or "disallowed". Although many professionals will agree that a patient's happiness is primarily important, amputating a limb may be out of the question because there is nothing medically wrong with the limb itself.
Until the 1990s, it tended to be described mostly as acrotomophilia, at the expense of other disabilities, or of the wish by some to pretend or acquire disability. Bruno (1997) systematised the attraction as factitious disability disorder. A decade on, others argue that erotic target location error is at play, classifying the attraction as an identity disorder. In the standard psychiatric reference "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", text revision (DSM-IV-tr), the fetish falls under the general category of "Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders" and the more specific category of paraphilia, or sexual fetishes; this classification is preserved in DSM-5.
Attraction to disability or devotism is a sexualised interest in the appearance, sensation and experience of disability. It may extend from normal human sexuality into a type of sexual fetishism. Sexologically, the pathological end of the attraction tends to be classified as a paraphilia. (Note, however, that the very concept "paraphilia" continues to elude satisfactory definition and remains a subject of ongoing debate in both professional and lay communities) Other researchers have approached it as a form of identity disorder. The most common interests are towards amputations, prosthesis, and crutches.