ABSTRACT
The chapter discusses various historical theories of self-injury. Seen through a modern lens, these theories may seem spurious, for example when Lillian Malcove wrote in 1933 about the link between learning to eat using knives, forks and spoons in early childhood and the practice of cutting in adulthood, or when Friedman and colleagues in 1972 describe NSSI as an unconscious, symbolic attempt at destroying the genitals as the seat of forbidden urges, only displaced to a different part of the body. Some of the early theories spring from a psychoanalytic framework and are interesting attempts at making sense of something that appears to defy meaning, namely the deliberate practice of inflicting pain and sometimes lasting damage on oneself. Next, it discusses some 21st-century models that explain the dynamics behind NSSI: the Chapman and colleagues’ Experiential Avoidance Model, Mathew Nock’s Integrated Model and the Hooley and Franklin’s Benefits and Barriers Model. The chapter closes with a discussion of some key risk factors: emotional neglect and abuse, low self-esteem and a negative self-image, attachment disorders and reduced mentalizing capacity, being a sexual minority youth (LGBTQ) and mental illness.
