ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the particular predisposing factors of body and selfdevelopment that occur during adolescence, and that are linked to self-harm. Before going any further it might be worthwhile to emphasise a central schema used throughout this book, namely that attacking the body is a symbolic satisfaction of different internal and conflictual states of mind. In this chapter, the conflicts particularly explored are those linked to sexuality and separation-individuation. These are the conflicts particularly associated with leaving home and growing up, and the various troublesome oscillations involved during this time of transition. In that sense it may be suggested that some of the psychic dilemmas so characteristic of adolescence are the same oscillations that characterise the deeply embedded encaptive conflict - those involved in wanting and leaving, possession and rejection. Self-harm typically begins in adolescence, and is characterised by an adolescent state of mind, even when the person harming themselves may be long past adolescence. An adolescent mind-set is not necessarily chronologically based, but can remain powerfully present and unresolved and so reactivated under pressure.
