The Times (UK) has an article about “cutting,” the use of self-mutilation as a means of emotionally expressing things that people otherwise feel unable to express. One of the psychologists interviewed points out that it replaces fainting spells and paralysis which might have been used in Freud’s time, although I find that specious and would question such a claim.
Unkindest cut of all – Health – Times Online:
The UK has the highest incidence of self-harm in Europe, says the Mental Health Foundation and the Camelot Foundation, which are jointly conducting the UK’s first inquiry into self-harm. Early findings show that one teenager in ten self-harms by cutting their skin, burning, scalding, hitting, scratching, hair pulling or swallowing poisons. Children as young as 7 are doing it. Girls outnumber boys by seven to one, but boys’ rates of self-harm have nearly doubled since the 1980s. More than 24,000 teenagers end up in hospital in the UK each year after deliberately harming themselves.
Technorati Tags: abnormal psychology, emotion, Mental health, psychology