Why Do We Hurt Ourselves? (EPUB) von Baptiste Brossard

1. This book offers an unprecedented perspective on a crucial social and psychological issue in Western countries, where, on average 18% of adolescents and young people say they have self-harmed at least once in their life.

2. While this work is a rigorous academic study, it is written in language comprehensible for any reader. It takes the unique perspective that the issues behind self-harm are more socially driven, aimed at maintaining order within social settings and place.

3. The book keeps readers engaged by making good use of strong personal stories. The text alternates between short and effective analytical sections and long presentation of individual stories and cases, relating excerpts from interviews and observations.

Introduction

Part One: A Practice of Self-Control

Introduction

1. The First Time

2. Towards a Feeling of Dependence

3. Talking about Self-Injury?

4. Quitting

5. Self-Injury on a Regular Basis

6. On the Manners to Self-Injure

Conclusion: Maintaining the Order

Part Two: A Social Positioning Practice

Introduction

7. The Staging of Discretion

8. At the Origin of "Relational Problems"

9. The Existential Crisis

10. What Gender Represents

11. What Some Events Imply

Conclusion: A Relational Map of Self-Injury

Conclusion: A Self-Controlled Youth

Endnotes

Index

Why does an estimated 5% of the general population intentionally and repeatedly hurt themselves? What are the reasons certain people resort to self-injury as a way to manage their daily lives? InWhy Do We Hurt Ourselves, sociologist Baptiste Brossard draws on a five-year survey of self-injurers and suggests that the answers can be traced to social, more than personal, causes. Self-injury is not a matter of disturbed individuals resorting to hurting themselves in the face of individual weaknesses and difficulties. Rather, self-injury is the reaction of individuals to the tensions that compose, day after day, the tumultuousness of their social life and position. Self-harm is a practice that people use to self-control and maintain orderto calm down, or to avoid "going haywire" or "breaking everything." More broadly, through this research Brossard works to develop a perspective on the contemporary social world at large, exploring quests for self-control in modern Western societies.

Baptiste Brossard, a French sociologist, is Lecturer at the Australian National University.