Automutilation. Quelques généralités sur un nouveau symptôme

Abstract

The author draws attention to an increasingly frequent symptom among young girls, namely self-injurious behavior consisting mainly of forearm and thigh lacerations. He links the current incidence of this symptomatic expression to the vision of a fissured body, widely propagated in the media, a "butcher's" vision where the skin serves merely as a receptacle. A history of sexual abuse is a predisposing factor, as are the injustices suffered. In these contexts, self-injurious behavior is perceived as a form of self-treatment, an attempt to reunify a body-psyche relationship broken by the trauma.