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[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Except that you are still fundamentally misunderstanding the issue. The issue wasn't, that he was perceiving his body in a way it wasn't. The problem was, that he was perceiving his body exactly the way it was and that to him having such a body was as deeply disturbing as actually having some monsterous, inhuman body.

If he was experiencing his body as monstrous when by objective standards and the observation of others, his body is not in fact monstrous, he was NOT

perceiving his body exactly the way it was

At all. He was disassociating and hallucinating, and thus not perceiving the reality of how his body actually is or was at that moment.

There's nothing wrong with having hallucinatory or disassociative episodes - lots of people (including me) have taken drugs for the express purpose of hallucinating and experiencing other ways of perceiving the world and our own bodies through all our various senses. Many of us have found this extremely beneficial. There's an entire literature written about it, from Huxley's classic The Doors of Perception from 1954 to recent works about people micro-dosing with LSD or using IV ketamine as treatments for and ways to prevent depression. Lots of rock 'n' roll is about these kinds of experiences, and The Doors are named after them.

Having experienced hallucinations can very much deepen one's understanding of reality, but hallucinations are not reality. People who mistake their hallucinations for reality are suffering from a delusion.

[–]Taln_Reich 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If he was experiencing his body as monstrous when by objective standards and the observation of others, his body is not in fact monstrous, he was NOT

perceiving his body exactly the way it was

At all. He was disassociating and hallucinating, and thus not perceiving the reality of how his body actually is or was at that moment.

There's nothing wrong with having hallucinatory or disassociative episodes - lots of people (including me) have taken drugs for the express purpose of hallucinating and experiencing other ways of perceiving the world and our own bodies through all our various senses. Many of us have found this extremely beneficial. There's an entire literature written about it, from Huxley's classic The Doors of Perception from 1954 to recent works about people micro-dosing with LSD or using IV ketamine as treatments for and ways to prevent depression. Lots of rock 'n' roll is about these kinds of experiences, and The Doors are named after them.

Having experienced hallucinations can very much deepen one's understanding of reality, but hallucinations are not reality. People who mistake their hallucinations for reality are suffering from a delusion.

Again. He wasn't hallucinating. That wasn't the problem. The problem is, that to him having a body of his birth sex is deeply and fundamentally disturbing to him, even if from a purely physical point there was nothing wrong with the body. It just isn't the kind of body that feels right to him.