Autophagia (pronounced aw-tuh-fey-juh or aw-tuh-fey-jee-uh)
(1) In cytology, the process of self-digestion by a cell
through the action of enzymes originating within the same cell (the controlled
digestion of damaged organelles within a cell which is often a defensive and/or
self-preservation measure and associated with the maintenance of bodily
nutrition by the metabolic breakdown of some bodily tissues).
(2) In cytology, a type of programmed cell death
accomplished through self-digestion (known also as apoptosis and associated
with the maintenance of bodily nutrition by the metabolic breakdown of some
bodily tissues).
(3) In psychiatry, self-consumption; the act of eating
oneself.
The construct was auto- + -phagia. The auto-prefix was a learned borrowing from
Ancient Greek αὐτο- (auto-) (self-) (reflexive, regarding or to oneself (and most
familiar in forms like autobiography)), from αὐτός (autós)
(himself/herself/oneself), from either a construct of (1) the primitive
Indo-European hew (again) + to-
(that) or (2) the Ancient Greek reflexes of those words, αὖ (aû) (back,
again, other) + τόν (tón) (the) and related to Phrygian αυτος (autos), the existence of alternatives suggesting there may have
been a common innovation. Phagia was from the Ancient Greek -φαγία (-phagía) (and related to -φαγος (-phagos) (eater)), the suffix
corresponding to φαγεῖν (phageîn) (to eat), the infinitive of ἔφαγον (éphagon)
(I eat), which serves as aorist (A verb paradigm found in certain languages,
usually an unmarked form or one that expresses the perfective or aorist aspect)
for the defective verb ἐσθίω (esthíō) (I eat). The
alternative spelling is autophagal and the synonyms (sometimes used in non-specialist
contexts) are self-consumption & auto-cannibalism. Autophagia, autophagophore, autophagosome
& autophagy are nouns, autophagically is an adverb, autophagocytotic is an
adjective and autophagic is an adjective (and a non-standard noun); the noun plural
is autophagies.
In cytology (in biology, the study of cells), autophagy
is one aspect of evolutionary development, a self-preservation and
life-extending mechanism in which damaged or dysfunctional parts of a cell are
removed and used for cellular repair.
Internally, it’s thus beneficial, the removal or recycling of debris
both efficient and (by this stage of evolutionary development) essential, most
obviously because it removes toxins and “effectively “creates” younger cells
from the old; it can thus be thought an anti-aging mechanism. It something which has also interested cancer
researchers because all cancers (as the word and the parameters of the
disease(s) are defined) start from some sort of cell-defect and the speculation
is it might be possible to in some way adapt the autophagic process, re-purposing
it to identify and remove suspect cells.
In psychiatry, autophagia refers to the act of eating
oneself which is sometimes described as self-consumption or the even more
evocative auto-cannibalism. Perhaps
surprisingly, the behavior is not explicitly mentioned in the American
Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM) which of course means there are no published diagnostic
criteria nor recommendations for treatments.
The DSM’s editors note there are a number of reasons why a specific
behavior may not be included in the manual notably (1) the lack of substantial
empirical evidence or research, (2) the rarity of cases and (3) the material to
hand being unsuitable (in terms of volume or quality) for the development of practical
tools for clinicians to diagnose and treat a disorders.
It would be flippant to suggest autophagia might have
been included when the revisions in the fifth edition of the DSM (DSM-5 (2013))
included a more systematic approach taken to eating disorders and as well as variable
definitional criteria being defined for the range of behaviours within that
general rubric, just about every other form of “unusual” consumption was listed
including sharp objects (acuphagia), purified starch (amylophagia), burnt
matches (cautopyreiophagia), dust (coniophagia), feces (coprophagia), sick
(emetophagia), raw potatoes (geomelophagia), soil, clay or chalk (geophagia),
glass (hyalophagia), stones (lithophagia), metal (metallophagia), musus
(mucophagia), ice (pagophagia), lead (plumbophagia), hair, wool, and other
fibres (trichophagia), urine (urophagia), blood (hematophagia (sometimes called
vampirism)) and wood or derivates such as paper & cardboard
(xylophagia). The DSM-5 also codified
the criteria for behaviour to be classified pica (a disorder characterized by
craving and appetite for non-edible substances, such as ice, clay, chalk, dirt,
or sand and named for the jay or magpie (pīca in Latin), based on the idea the
birds will eat almost anything): they must (1) last beyond one (1) month beyond
an age in infancy when eating such objects is not unusual, (2) not be
culturally sanctioned practice and (3), in quantity or consequence, be of
sufficient severity to demand clinical intervention. However, pica encompassed only “non-nutritive
substances” which of course one’s own body parts are not.
Finger food: Severed fingers are a popular menu item for Halloween parties; kids think they're great. For those who like detail, those emulating nail polish seem to be following Dior shades 742 (top right) and 999 (bottom right).
In the profession, autophagia seems to be regarded not as
a progression from those who eat their fingernails or hair but something with more
in common with the cutters. Cutters are
the best known example of self-harmers, the diagnosis of which is described in DSM
as non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). NSSI
is defined as the deliberate, self-inflicted destruction of body tissue without
suicidal intent and for purposes not socially sanctioned; it includes behaviors
such as cutting, burning, biting and scratching skin. Behaviorally, it’s highly clustered with
instances especially prevalent during adolescence and the majority of cases
being female although there is some evidence the instances among males may be
under-reported. It’s a behavior which
has long interested and perplexed the profession because as something which
involves deliberate and intentional injury to body tissue in the absence of suicidal
intent (1) it runs counter to the fundamental human instinct to avoid injury
and (2) as defined the injuries are never sufficiently serious to risk death, a
well-understood reason for self-harm.
Historically, such behaviors tended to be viewed as self-mutilation and
were thought a form of attenuated suicide but in recent decades more attention
has been devoted to the syndrome, beginning in the 1980s at a time when
self-harm was regarded as a symptom of borderline personality disorder (BPD)
(personality disorders first entered DSM when DSM-III was published in 1980),
distinguished by suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or acts of
self-mutilation. Clinicians however
advanced the argument the condition should be thought a separate syndrome
(deliberate self-harm syndrome (DSHS)), based on case studies which identified
(1) a patient’s inability to resist the impulse to injure themselves, (2) a
raised sense of tension prior to the act and (3) an experience of release or at
least partial relief after the act. That
a small number of patients were noted as repeatedly self-harming was noted and
it was suggested that a diagnosis called repetitive self-mutilation syndrome
(RSMS) should be added to the DSM.
Important points associated with RSMS were (1) an absence of conscious
suicidal intent, (2) the patient’s perpetually negative affective/cognitive
which was (temporarily) relieved only after an act of self-harm and (3) a
preoccupation with and repetitiveness of the behavior. Accordingly, NSSI Disorder was added to the
DSM-5 (2013) and noted as a condition in need of further study.
However, although there would seem some relationship to
cutting, it’s obviously a different behavior to eat one’s body parts and the
feeling seems to be that autophagia involves a quest for pain and that suggests
some overlap with other conditions and it certainly belongs in the sub category
of self-injurious behavior (SIB). The
literature is said to be sparse and the analysis seems not to have been
extensive but the behavior has been noted in those diagnosed with a variety of
conditions including personality disorders, anxiety disorders, obsessive
compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The last two have been of particular interest
because the act of biting off and eating some body part (most typically
fingers) has been associated with the experience of hallucinations and patients
have been recorded as saying the pain of the injury “makes the voices stop”. Importantly, autophagia has a threshold and
while in some senses can be thought a spectrum condition (in terms of frequency
& severity), behaviors such as biting (and even consuming) the loose skin
on the lips (morsicatio buccarum) or the ragged edges of skin which manifest
after nail biting (onychophagia) are common and few proceed to autophagia and
clinicians note neurological reasons may also be involved.
Lindsay Lohan with bread on the syndicated Rachael Ray Show, April 2019.
Autophagia and related words should not be confused with the adjective artophagous (bread-eating). The construct was the Artos + -phagous. Artos was from the Ancient Greek ἄρτος (ártos) (bread), of pre-Greek origin. Phagous was from the Latin -phagus, from the Ancient Greek -φάγος (-phágos) (eating) from φαγεῖν (phageîn) (to eat). Apparently, in the writings of the more self-consciously erudite, the word artophagous, which enjoyed some currency in the nineteenth century, was still in occasional use as late as the 1920s but most lexicographers now either ignore it or list it as archaic or obsolete. It’s an example of a word which has effectively been driven extinct even though the practice it describes (the eating of bread) remains as widespread and popular as ever. Linguistically, this is not uncommon in English and is analogous with the famous remark by Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani (1930–2021; Saudi Arabian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources 1962-1986): “The Stone Age came to an end not for a lack of stones, and the Oil Age will end, but not for a lack of oil” (the first part of that paraphrased usually as the punchier “the Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of rocks”).
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