In Raleigh, North Carolina, Jewel Shuping is finally happy. With the help of what was described as a “sympathetic psychologist,” Shuping, 30, fulfilled a lifelong dream in blinding herself with drain cleaner. Shuping says that she always wanted to be blind and is now overjoyed to be disabled. It is the latest example of what is called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) where able bodied people disable themselves. What is even more astonishing is that there is no indication of any discipline of the alleged psychologist who performed this harmful practice.
Shuping says that the tried previously to blind herself in 2006 and spent her childhood staring into the sun to try to become blind. By 18, she was walking around with dark glasses and a white cane. By 20, she was fluent in braille.
She said that she finally found a doctor who agreed to blind her by giving her numbing eye drops and then drops of drain cleaner. She recalls the painful procedure with joy as fulfilling her longtime dream. A hospital tried against her will to save her eyes but they were unsuccessful. Indeed, she said that she was enraged when she woke and could see the television but soon her eyes failed entirely.
Shuping is now studying for a degree in education and says that she wants to help fellow blind people. Her only regret is that she wishes that she could have seen her father’s face again and now he has died. That could raise a challenging question of the suitability of a person for a teaching position (if she seeks one) after engaging in self-mutilation.
She insists “I really feel this is the way I was supposed to be born, that I should have been blind from birth . . . When there’s nobody around you who feels the same way, you start to think that you’re crazy. But I don’t think I’m crazy, I just have a disorder.”
This strikes most of us as a form of mental illness and the question is why a psychologist would participate in the mutilation of a patient to satisfy her craving to be blind. Obviously, such a doctor should be stripped of his or her license but there is no indication of any effort to identify the doctor. There is also the question of whether such action should be prosecuted as a crime. Many of us believe in the right of people to take their own lives but this is a case of someone who is clearly mentally ill seeking assistance with a mutilation of their body. Yet, there are clearly tough lines to draw here. After all, we allow people to engage in extensive piercings, branding, and blood lettings for recreation or style. Some are effectively permanent changes like the cutting of the tongue of “Lizard man.” Yet, this is a disability which imposes social costs for the community. The one thing that I am confidant about is that any doctor who participated in this action should not be treating patients of any kind. Shuping may be lying about the doctor but it seems hard to believe that someone could do this without help (at least not in both eyes as opposes to one eye given the pain, even with numbing drops). It is not impossible but, given her account, I would think that there would be an effort to determine the truth.
Source: Mirror
That’s a very incredibly sad way to go.
I, for one, would not want to go blind at all. That’s the major turn-off for me. Going blind will force me to learn Braille, imagine people’s faces, clutch the corners of the table trying to find the way to the bathroom, and using the cane to measure the distance before I hit a pavement, the curb, or something else. I may just fall off.
Of course, over time, as a blind person, I may adjust but man, I will have a strong desire to throw myself in front of a train and just die a la Maud’Dib, having been blinded, and taken by Shai Hulud in the 2nd Dune book.
In my entire life, I’m already disabled as is but I don’t let my disability define me. I actually go out, study at school, and will become a person who will work for more $$$. I won’t retire at all, even if I’m older. It’s better that I’m dead while working, not at home mooching off Social Security just because I’m “deemed old”.
Oh, and if I am a bad dog in this life then I will have to come back in the next life as a human.
In a prior life as a human I worked as a civil rights lawyer to advocate for the rights of the mentally ill or incompetent (psychotic and mentally low IQ– cant say retarded). We lowered the population in some state facilities which “housed” these people. We found that some could be treated on the outside in the free world and live safe lives and be free. The state had been locking up people for life and some were not even that mentally ill or low IQ. One guy had gone in when he was seven years old and was 35 when a probate judge released him for the order for civil commitment. The doctors who worked in the hospital and an outsider we hired each said that he had no mental illness of any DSM II status and was not of low IQ. He was a bit warped from living in the nut house.
Over time since 1979 there has been some tendency to ignore mental illness and not treat them or not require treatment.
I also noticed in my days as civil rights litigator for the mentally ill and low IQ folks that there were many medical doctors in the psychiatric field or psychologist who were wacko themselves. Wacko people in med school get drawn to this field because they maybe dont want to do any surgery.
Or dont like gonorea.
As to blind lady here. Maybe she will decide that she does not want to have kids and will do her own hysterectomy. Maybe society can find out if she is lying about the doctor who helped her, or find that doctor and perhaps blind him. Blind leading the blind. This lady should be denied any public assistance. Give her a sign which says “Help Me I’m Blind”, a folding chair on a street corner, and an empty coffee cup for the donations. Get her a guide dog for the blind. Take her to an Eighth Day Dog Adventist church service. Tell the dog to be wary of her because she is wacko.
Most guide dogs understand English so just tell him the story. Many guide dogs were humans in prior incarnations. I was one. I was a good human so Saint Peter let me come back as a dog as a reward. It was a choice, not an echo and I did not need help from Phyllis Schlafley or Barry Goldwater.
Clinical Management of Gender Dysphoria in Young Boys: Genital Mutilation and DSM IV Implications
L. M. Lothstein PhD, ABPPa
Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality Volume 5, Issue 4, 1993
And you are quite wrong about this as well: “Transgendered do not take matters into their own hands…“, for indeed they do:
American Journal of Forensic Medicine & Pathology:
September 2005 – Volume 26 – Issue 3 – pp 268-270
Psychotherapist Understanding of Genital Self-Mutilation Amongst Male to Female Transsexuals
Michael Robert Kenney, Loyola University Chicago; Dissertation 2013, citing “Young, L. D., & Feinsilver, D. L. (1986). Male genital self‐mutilation: Combined surgical and psychiatric care. Psychosomatics, 27(7), 513‐517. “
“Transgendered do not take matters into their own hands in correcting their body image, while BIID patients do.”
Jim,
And the happy birthday hormones for the 14 year old the other day was not “taking matters into their own hands…”?
” This fact defines the line between the sane and the insane.”
Not at all. Just because you want someone else to mutilate you doesn’t make the idea any less disordered.
You’re merely finding that that these disorders also have sadistic and masochistic tendencies, which is indeed evident in the research.
So, no, not a dividing line at all.
Olly, For the most part, only people involved in disability cases are aware of self mutilation for dollars. The most common is unneeded back surgery. It was shocking to me when I started out in this biz to learn there are people who would have back surgery that was not needed, and there were docs willing to do it. There was a “highly respected” Ivy League educated surgeon in my neck of the woods who had his license taken away for doing surgeries on healthy backs. What I also see is the reason is not only for dollars, but to sustain an opiate addiction. I often wonder about the mentality of people so averse to working. They are not happy people.
Why should the doctor lose his license? He only enabled her to be blinded. What does JT have against women and their bodies?
There is one vital difference between BIID and transgendered people that needs to be taken into account. Transgendered do not take matters into their own hands in correcting their body image, while BIID patients do. Years ago, when surgery was not available for transgendered people, you did not hear of men lopping off their penises or women cutting off their breasts because they couldn’t get surgical help. The same is not true for BIID patients, who resort to self mutilation because surgery is unavailable. This fact defines the line between the sane and the insane.
Olly, Indeed, and now that her new configuration meets disability criteria, she will be on the dole. There are a record 94 million people not working in this country, many on the dole thanks to our generous Prez.
Nick,
I don’t believe so. After all, her disability was that she could see; now she believes she is configured as she has always believed she should be.
KCF, spot on!
Fiat justitia, et pereat mundus.
She is now eligible for Obama’s SS disability party. Has anyone considered the ramifications on us taxpayers for this woman’s desire for attention?
I don’t know where you learned about this episode, but I live in the area and there has been no mention of it, as far as I know, in local media.
“…a particularly charged one.”
The word “mutilation” is an interesting one here, as it is a particularly charged on, both emotionally and politically.
Both transgenders and BIID patients seek to mutilate their body, but we only use that word when the latter seek it out, even though the former seek the same outcome.
Yet we tend toward the euphemism of “surgery” and “transitioning” to describe transgenders, over against BBID.
It’s similar to the word choices in abortion. Abortion supporters favor “tissue” harvesting rather than mentioning “organs” and “limbs” (or even bone marrow and brains).
I argue that liberals tend toward euphemisms that help them avoid harsh reality when faced by the ugliness of the reality of their positions.
Conservatives certainly do so as well. But at present the mainstream culture is dominated by the left, and conservative word choices have minimal effect.
What do I think? I think you and she deserve your own pages in the DSM-5.
Same cause as transgenderism.
But we are supposed to embrace the latter.
So we can see that your statement can be easily restated: “This strikes most of us as a form of mental illness and the question is why a psychologist would participate in the mutilation of a patient to satisfy her craving to be…” the sex they weren’t born into
Gender Dysphoria and Body Integrity Identity Disorder: Similarities and Differences
Alicia Garcia-Falgueras
Psychology 2014. Vol.5, No.2, 160-165
.
Of course this raises the question of mental illness, stability, etc and rights. Now Wayne the Peter would advocate that it is her right to do with her body as she wishes and therefore she should be able to own and operate a gun. He would point out that her increased senses of hearing and smell would more than compensate for her not being able to see what she was shooting. Should she be denied her 2nd amendment rights? What do you think?