Items related to A Bright Red Scream: Self-Mutilation and the Language...
Synopsis
This book is about people who deliberately cut their skin, burn themselves, & break their own bones. They do it systematically for many years, & without help they can rarely stop. Many have lived through severe forms of emotional or physical childhood abuse. Estimates are that more than two million Americans are chronic self-injurers. In this book, women & men, young & old, explain the reasons they hurt themselves, the relief it sometimes brings them, & why they feel they cannot stop. The author explains how cutting can become a coping mechanism for dealing with emotional pain & gaining control over an out-of-control mind & body. Includes information on what people can do to start healing.
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Review
"A bright red scream" is how one of the subjects Marilee Strong interviews in this chilling yet compassionate study of self-mutilation describes the sensation of intentionally inflicting pain upon oneself. It is a compulsion that, while shocking and bewildering to most people, affects 2 million or more Americans and countless others around the globe--one of whom, the late Princess Diana, also suffered from the eating disorders that characterize between 35 to 80 percent of all cutters. Rejecting the classic psychiatric wisdom that views self-mutilation as a species of suicidal behavior, Strong links the phenomenon instead to the will to live--often in the face of such overwhelming childhood abuse that the resulting dissociative behaviors are something akin to posttraumatic stress disorder. Strong touches on other issues as well: Why are most cutters women? And is the current fascination with tattooing and piercing, from its most extreme forms in the "alternative" culture to its growing mainstream acceptance, a sublimation of the cutters' instinct? Through interviews with more than 50 self-injurers, Strong tells the moving story not only of their rage and self-punishment, but also of the courageous journey towards reintegration. (The book also contains an introduction by psychiatrist Armando R. Favazza, author of Bodies Under Seige, one of the leading clinical experts on self-mutilation.) --Patrizia DiLucchio
From the Back Cover
Meet Daphne, age sixteen. There are times when she hurts so bad, "too deep for tears", that she must shed her own blood to "let out some of the hurt". There's Annie, a woman who stopped injuring herself years ago but admits that she would cut again because she loves her scars too much, loves the control they give her over her own body. And Lukas, a forty-three-year old lawyer, describes the powerful, soothing rush he gets from his self-induced wounds: "The feeling I get when the blood comes out is better than anything. It's better than drinking, it's better than any drug I've ever taken, it's better than sex".
Why do some people need to inflict pain on themselves? At least two million Americans, and millions more worldwide, are cutters -- notably, the late Princess Diana. Yet, the reasons behind the need to self-mutilate are profoundly complex and largely misunderstood. Marilee Strong shatters the stereotypes and dispels the myths surrounding the phenomenon of self-mutilation and gets to the heart of the matter by way of her subjects. The voices of cutters themselves, combined with Strong's own astute observations, make for an unparalleled exploration of the disorder that has been called the "addiction of the nineties".
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherViking/Penguin
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 078819917X
- ISBN 13 9780788199172
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages232
- Rating
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