Although I have never wanted to have any body parts amputated and don't want my testosterone level reduced, I have logged into this website on a number of occasions since finding it through a link a couple of months ago, and have made several posts on the message board. I find the Cellar and Political forums interesting, though the other parts of the message board don't usually include much that I want to read.

What strikes me as noteworthy is that most of the people who post on this forum seem sane and level headed. If you asked someone on the street what type of person would want his gonads cut off, the answer would probably be, that the person would have to be crazy to want that done. Yet I can't think offhand of anyone whose posts indicate severe mental imbalance. Some people are crazy most of the time, but have lucid intervals, so I suppose there could be some archive members who aren't as sane as they seem, but it seems to me unlikely that most of the people on the archive are much different than those members of the general public who don't have the castration desire.

I would assume that some of those who post on this forum have sought psychiatric counseling, and others were likely sent to a psychiatrist after their doctors or someone else found out what they were thinking. So my question is, simply, what do psychiatrists say about men who want their testes or penises removed? Is the desire considered a neuroses, a psychosis, an obsession which comes and goes? And has there been any medical research on the reasons why this urge develops? Is it considered a kind of half-baked desire for a sex change operation? There seems to be a wide cross section of people on the archive, in terms of age, sexual orientation, and lifestyle, so the desire for castration would appear to have a wide distribution in the population, though the number of people who actually have that desire must be a small percentage of all males. Other than on the forum, I never heard of anyone who wanted the procedure done, except for a few sex offenders who wanted to get out of prison.

I saw a psychologist briefly for post traumatic stress and on the third visit I told him I was a eunuch. Previously I told him of the events in my life that caused my PTSD. I mentioned my gender dysphoria of not feeling male but not wanting to be female. He thought I had made a logical choice for myself and was glad I was happy with the choice. His eyes did get a little bigger when he asked if the surgeon had me see a therapist and I asked what surgeon. He seemed to think I was quite sane. I agree.

It's a good question Beau! I was forced to a counsellor by my parents when they discovered I was self-harming in my late teens. Of course, really it was the desire to lose my testicles, though I rarely came anywhere close in the home.

And I know from seeing my own psychotherpist that - in his view - it didn't matter what it was called, or even what caused it. His primary concern was eliminating the urge to do things to myself, and was a firm proponent of behavioural therapy. Looking back, I wished the root cause could have been explored more thoroughly before I was castrated a few years later.

That said, I doubt the urges would have gone away entirely, and the thoughts would still have remained.

I guess this is a divisive topic, because some (like myself) will see this as a gender dysphoria, consisting of other traits and characteristics about myself and my identity that did not 'fit in with being male'. For others, it is done for asthetics.

But I think the universal view from any professional is that it is 'not normal', and they will not recognize it as anything other than what it is on the surface; a seemingly irrational desire to harm the body. (I know the few people I saw did!)

I never went to a psychiatrist, but did see two counselors, but they were not much help. I think that I am sane and was sane but not when testosterone was driving me to self abuse. The testosterone seemed to control my mind and I could not stop myself. I was driven to do damaging things, like cutting my scrotum open repeatedly week after week, month after month, year after year. For me, I think that there was some insanity in this action. On the other hand, with true insanity there are chemical inbalances, which is why a lot of people today who were once considered insane, can now live very "normal" lives by taking psychotropic? drugs, like depakote, zyprexa, clozapine, risperidone, etc. Maybe the eunuch community is similar in that we had a chemical inbalance of testosterone. I'll have to give this more thought, but I think I'm on to something. Hash

I saw a psychiatrist specialising in gender issues briefly just to check out whether I was severely off base about having my testicles removed. She had seen a lot o' guys with a castration desire, and I think she was just quite neutral towards older guys, explaining that there was both gender dysphoria and genital dysphoria. While the latter's abnormal, she didn't try to dissuade guys that she thought would be satisfied by losing their parts and that were otherwise balanced and normal. She complemented herself on dissuading some younger guys - late teens, early 20s - that might experience later regret about having their reproductive ability eliminated.

Another guy I know - already without balls or sac - also saw her to get a letter for a surgeon that he was aware of the consequences of having his cock removed. She supplied it after determining that he was normal except for this desire to have no external genitalia. He was also lucky to have a supportive wife and is now a happy bloke with a smooth crotch.

Of course, my BF knows I'm castrated, and I'm not shy about going nude in public. Few people notice, and it's not a big deal for most others. Even guys with whom I've had casual sex just accept I've no balls when they've determined my sac's empty.

There appear to be two separate issues here.

1. Gender identity/sex change.

2. Reduction of an abnormal sex drive.

The first issue is dealt with quite often by psychiatrists and there is a growing body of knowledge and of knowlegible doctors regarding it. As a result, TG persons should have little trouble finding help.

The second issue is still a gray area when it comes to finding a doctor. Unless you are a sex offender residing in certain States, there isn't much you can do openly. So this means that a non-TG male has great difficulty getting suitable medical treatment.

I'd like to hear from a psychologist or psychiatrist regarding non-TG castration issues.

What does a Psyciatrist say :

I heard a talk show the other day about a gay person also having wife and kids - and how wrong that was. Well while listening to this harrange, I thought, why could not a GAY person who likes menfolk - also like woman kind and have a family with her and kids - this sounded to me to be quite a normal thing, I thought.

I wonder what You GURUS think and why not ??? N3RF

Beau Geste (imported) wrote: Mon Sep 25, 2006 1:24 pm Although I have never wanted to have any body parts amputated and don't want my testosterone level reduced, I have logged into this website on a number of occasions since finding it through a link a couple of months ago, and have made several posts on the message board. I find the Cellar and Political forums interesting, though the other parts of the message board don't usually include much that I want to read.

What strikes me as noteworthy is that most of the people who post on this forum seem sane and level headed. If you asked someone on the street what type of person would want his gonads cut off, the answer would probably be, that the person would have to be crazy to want that done. Yet I can't think offhand of anyone whose posts indicate severe mental imbalance. Some people are crazy most of the time, but have lucid intervals, so I suppose there could be some archive members who aren't as sane as they seem, but it seems to me unlikely that most of the people on the archive are much different than those members of the general public who don't have the castration desire.

I would assume that some of those who post on this forum have sought psychiatric counseling, and others were likely sent to a psychiatrist after their doctors or someone else found out what they were thinking. So my question is, simply, what do psychiatrists say about men who want their testes or penises removed? Is the desire considered a neuroses, a psychosis, an obsession which comes and goes? And has there been any medical research on the reasons why this urge develops? Is it considered a kind of half-baked desire for a sex change operation? There seems to be a wide cross section of people on the archive, in terms of age, sexual orientation, and lifestyle, so the desire for castration would appear to have a wide distribution in the population, though the number of people who actually have that desire must be a small percentage of all males. Other than on the forum, I never heard of anyone who wanted the procedure done, except for a few sex offenders who wanted to get out of prison.

One point I think that has to be made is that we are here for a variety of different reasons. Transexuals may desire castration simply to eliminate the costs and possible dangers of anti androgens. Men with insane sex drives that want to "do it" with little kids and are sane enough to know this is wrong may desire castration to simply get themselves under control. Some people have medical issues with their Testicles. Cancer, Hypogonadism, cronic pains etc and need them out (or have them out already) for that reason. Accidents, war injuries the list goes on. There are some who want this for fetish reasons as well. And if you look at the stories you will see they write some very creative prose which may shock, horrify or turn people on or all three. I came here also expecting some crazy insane "cult" people wanting to get cut so they could get a better seat on the mother ship UFO. So far? None on the rocket ship to MARS that I can find.

Beau,

I think your question rather ought to be looked at from a different perspective.

A quick answer would be that, along with transsexualism, volunteer castration is still viewed as a psychopathology among the majority of psychiatrists, although there have never been any references to eunuchs and castration in the psychiatric bible (DSM). In a few studies I have seen on medline, men with a castration desire were reffered to as "paranoid schizophrenics" who simply required extra large doses of the toxic chemical lithium as a "palliative treatment" (for example, see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... med_docsum ). Neither the real causes nor the well-recognized ill effects of testosterone were mentioned as a possible reason why these men wanted to be castrated, and the circumstances examined were of a questionable relevance. All they cared about is how to propagate yet one reason to increase the sales of the pharmacies that manufacture psychiatric drugs. The psychiatrist views on volunteer castration (unless it is a medical neccessity or in case of sexual abuse) is mostly filled with extreme prejudice and an ignorance of encyclopedic proportions.

Personally, I give a total damn (pardon the expression) about what a so-called "psychiatric community" may think - theorize - about people who desire castration on a well-informed, volunteer basis. I say this not only because I consider castration as perhaps the most unique surgical procedure there is (testicles are the only organs in the body that work for a foreign purpose - reproduction & associated behavior - ie. the testicles are parasites, with no practical benefit, and at times direct harm, for vital biological proccesses of the organism), but simply because, who would in their own right really care about what a bunch of unscientific charlatans have to say on the matter? Because this is the most important assertion we can make about the field of psychiatry.

We should keep in mind what psychiatry is and what it isn't. It is NOT a valid science. To this date, psychiatry failed to produce adequate proof of at least one of the by now 300 diagnoses listed in the DSM-IV (the amount of diagnoses keep growing - the next issue of DSM is expected to list up to 600 new diagnoses, according to a central APA member). There is no objective test - no blood or brain scan tests - for any of the psychiatric diagnoses that can be validated outside the subjective impression of an individual psychiatrist (or "inquisitor", if you like). Even psychiatrists recognize this important fact. According to a former president of the APA, Robert Spitzer, the DSM is "not a scientific document. It is a bunch of smart people who studied the literature and then came up with the best way to define diseases -- very few of the categories have an empirical base.", admitting that "DSM classifications did not rest on new scientific data". http://www.templeton-cambridge.org/fell ... art_1.html.

Unlike other medical professions, psychiatrists actually vote over the inclusions or exlusions of various "psychopathologies", and often with considerable disagreement (In 1973, 5584 psychiatrists voted against 3810 other psychiatrists to remove homosexuality as a "psychopathology" - 68% vs. 32%) Only the top influential APA psychiatrists - about a few thousands - are allowed to vote in defining a new "disorder" (just imagine the MD's voting over such diseases as diabetes, cancer, HIV.. ). In fact, simply put, psychiatry is a whore of the Big Pharmacy (f inst., see http://www.prozactruth.com/dsm_iv.htm and http://www.mental-health-abuse.org/rehabFraud5.html), and the result is that at least unlike psychology, psychiatry is NOT concerned with causes, only symptoms - symptoms that can be medicamented.

The whole "chemical imbalance" theory failed to produce any proofs and is still widely debated; not only is it impossible to define what a "chemical balance" really is, there is, again, no tests or scans that can effectively and without a doubt document a "chemical imbalance", equivalent to tests for say, diabetes or cancer (see: http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=mod ... le&sid=643). The effects of brain altering psychiatric drugs, while poorly documented to produce significant results (see: http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities ... nagers.asp), are nothing more than a "knock-out" effect by numbing the brain. It does NOT correct any "chemical imbalances", instead, it merely poisons the brain and numbs the symptoms, ALONG with many other vital personality traits of the "patient".

And I will not go into the history of psychiatry and it's role in psychosurgery, Nazi genocide and USSR political witch-hunt.

Having said that, I must add that I do NOT deny that emotional crises and irrational and bothersome behaviors do exist. What I am saying is that there has to be a distinction between a "mental disorder" and "currently socially unacceptable behavior" (nurture vs. nature, etc.). Unfortunately, psychiatry failed to realize the destinction between the two. Besides, it is compeltely wrong to assemble a set of behaviors (many of wich are mostly unrelated - see the links below) under an umbrella term of "disease", totally ignoring the peronal history and bioloigcal makeup of a person, drug it down and get away with it. Various forms of 'psychopathology' do arise from hormonal imbalances and neurological lesions (wich CAN be documented by objectionable trests), but I strongly disagree with the authoritarian psychiatric approach of "blaming the brain".

The bottom line is that is a total waste to discuss causes with a psychiatrist. If anything, psychaitry is all about politics, social control and big bucks. It has gradually taken this role over the Grand Inquisition and witch doctors/priests of the past, arrogantly hiding behind the phony shield of "science" and "medical authority" wich they are imposing on the society through the means of propaganda and advertizing. If you need help with self-insight, see a psychologist, or a priest. At least they won't see you as a potential customer of the Phramcy Industries, at least not as instantly.

PS: For more interesting links about psychiatry see (I do not neccessary agree with all of the statements below, but I agree with most):

http://www.psychdisorders.org/reviews.html - "Psychiatrists and other professionals on psychiatry"

http://www.szasz.com/manifesto.html - Manifesto of Dr. Thomas Szasz, a former psychiatrist and psychiatric abolitionist.

http://www.oikos.org/mosher.htm - An official resignation letter to APA from a prominent psychiatrist Loren Mosher, MD. "Famous psychiatrist L.R. Mosher resigns from the American Psychiatric Association in disgust"

http://www.breggin.com/ - The offical site of Peter R. Breggin, MD., with lots of info on psychiatric drugs.

http://www.antipsychiatry.org/ - The Antipsychiatry Coalition, lots of links & articles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment - The famous Rosenhan experiment on the validity of psychiatric diagnoses.

Thanks for a most interesting response. I have to agree with 98% of what you say about psychiatrists.

As for calling your gonads "parasitic organs" - I have to disagree with this. Without gonads, there would be no reproduction - and that is the primary biological function of most life - to multiply itself. I'd have to say that our brains are the real parasitic organs - without them we wouldn't need psychiatrists or be discussing castration issues at all!