The Tender Cut: Inside the Hidden World of Self-Injury

Cutting, Burning, Branding, And Bone-breaking Are All Types Of Self-injury, Or The Deliberate, Non-suicidal Destruction Of Oneocos 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 Communiqu(r)s. 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.