The tender cut
Subtitle: inside the hidden world of self-injury
By: Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler
Contributors: Adler, Peter, 1951-
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 252
ISBN-13: 9780814705063; 9780814705070; 9780814705186
Subjects: Psychological Stress; Psychology; Adaptability (Psychology); Social isolation; Stress (Psychology); Psychological Adaptation; Self-Injurious Behavior; Social Isolation; Social Environment; Self-injurious behavior
Description: "Cutting, burning, branding, and bone-breaking are all types of self-injury, or the deliberate, non-suicidal destruction of one's own body tissue, a practice that emerged from obscurity in the 1990s and spread dramatically as a typical behavior among adolescents. Long considered a suicidal gesture, [this book] argues instead that self-injury is often a coping mechanism, a form of teenage angst, an expression of group membership, and a type of rebellion, converting unbearable emotional pain into manageable physical pain. Based on the largest, qualitative, non-clinical population of self-injurers ever gathered, noted ethnographers Patricia and Peter Adler draw on 150 interviews with self-injurers from all over the world, along with 30,000-40,000 internet posts in chat rooms and communiqués. Their 10-year longitudinal research follows the practice of self-injury from its early days when people engaged in it alone and did not know others, to the present, where a subculture has formed via cyberspace that shares similar norms, values, lore, vocabulary, and interests. An important portrait of a troubling behavior, [the book] illuminates the meaning of self-injury in the 21st century, its effects on current and former users, and its future as a practice for self-discovery or a cry for help."--Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Literature and population; title: Studying self-injury; title: Becoming a self-injurer; title: The phenomenology of the cut; title: Loners in the social world; title: Colleagues in the cyber world; title: Self-injury communities; title: Self-injury relationships; title: The social transformation of self-injury; title: Careers in self-injury; title: Understanding self-injury.