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(2015) Making sense of self-harm, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
The disturbing effect of an "unclean spirit" described in Mark's gospel raises an interesting question of meaning and categorisation, namely the degree to which we can recognise here exactly the same pattern of meaning and action that we now call 'self-harm" or "nonsuicidal selfinjury". As a recognised pattern and category of disorder self-harm is relatively new, traceable at best to the 1938 book Man Against Himsel. by the great psychiatrist Karl Menninger. However, the prevalence and cultural pervasiveness that self-harm has gained since the 1990s has, unsurprisingly, provoked an obvious question: has it always been with us and we simply failed to notice? Or is self-harm more a product and expression of its particular time and place?
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Full citation:
Steggals, P. (2015). What is self-harm?, in Making sense of self-harm, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 17-51.
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