The Tender Cut : : Inside the Hidden World of Self-Injury / / Peter Adler, Patricia A. Adler.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Adler, Patricia A.,; Adler, Peter,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2011]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

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, The Tender Cut 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 Tender Cut 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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Literature and Population -- 3 Studying Self-Injury -- 4 Becoming a Self-Injurer -- 5 The Phenomenology of the Cut -- 6 Loners in the Social World -- 7 Colleagues in the Cyber World -- 8 Self-Injury Communities -- 9 Self-Injury Relationships -- 10 The Social Transformation of Self-Injury -- 11 Careers in Self-Injury -- 12 Understanding Self-Injury -- Notes -- References -- Index -- About the Authors