Cutting, burning, branding, and bone-breaking are all types of self-injury, or the deliberate, non-suicidal destruction of one’s 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 communiqués. 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.

There is a free preview of the introduction available on Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/61131981/The-Tender-Cut

You may have noticed them—the kids who are hiding their pain under long sleeves or wristbands. Or you might never notice them—the ones who seem to have life together except for the deep secret that they keep hidden beneath their clothes. This is no longer a fringe issue that occurs only in the most extreme cases. The truth is that many teens today are dealing with their emotional pain by inflicting physical pain upon themselves, whether we can see it on the surface or not. While we may never fully understand the motives behind self-mutilation and cutting, we can begin to understand why some teens cut, and more importantly, we can learn how to help. Hope and Healing for Kids Who Cut will take you into the world of self-injury, defining what it is—and what it is not. You’ll hear stories from teens and young adults who struggle with the urge to hurt themselves, and you’ll learn to recognize the signs of self-injury. Read more »

Books & Other Media Information

Amazon: 

Hope and Healing for Kids Who Cut: Learning to Understand and Help Those Who Self-Injure (Youth Specialties)

Author: Marv Penner

Publisher: Zondervan/Youth Specialties (2008)

Binding: Paperback, 160 pages

This is a candid look at a form of self-injury that is increasingly prevalent but rarely discussed. Cutting, a form of self-mutilation, is a growing problem in the United States, especially among adolescent females. It is regarded as self-destructive behavior, yet paradoxically, people who cut themselves generally do not wish to die but to find relief from unbearable psychological pain. "Cutting and the Pedagogy of Self-Disclosure" is the first book to explore how college students write about their experiences as cutters. The idea behind the book arose when Patricia Hatch Wallace, a high school English teacher, wrote a reader-response diary for a graduate course taught by Professor Jeffrey Berman in which she revealed for the first time that she had cut herself twenty years earlier. At Berman's suggestion, Wallace wrote her Master's thesis on cutting. Not long after she finished her thesis, two students in Berman's expository writing course revealed their own experiences as cutters. Their disclosures encouraged several students in another writing class to share their own cutting stories with classmates. Read more »

Books & Other Media Information

Amazon: 

Cutting and the Pedagogy of Self-Disclosure

Author: Jeffrey Berman, Patricia Hatch Wallace

Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Pr (2007)

Binding: Hardcover, 284 pages