ABSTRACT
She walked back into the room following her AWOL (residential lingo for runaway). Approaching the counselor, she exposed her forearms which were covered wrist to elbow in scratches. The counselor asked what happened. The ordinarily articulate 14-year-old tearfully replied, “I scratched myself. I don’t know why. Please don’t tell anybody.” “Have you done this before?,” asked the counselor. “No, it just occurred to me while I was out walking.” During the next hour, the discussion yielded little about what had precipitated the behavior except that the young girl identified that she had not been able to feel real and wanted to see if she could still bleed.
