Human beings need certain proofs in order to exist and to feel their existence. Sometimes these proofs come through others, and sometimes through their own body, which is both very distant and very close to them. For some people, the struggle for existence is so challenging that within this struggle they engage in initiatives and attempts that others cannot understand.
These individuals try to feel themselves, their sense of self, by cutting or piercing their bodies or by using other methods, and they try to become certain of their own existence. Because the distance between themselves and their sense of self is so great, and their self is so numb that they resort to the most painful methods to activate it. These acts of harming the body reveal not the burning of the flesh, but rather the value of one’s being. For these individuals, pain becomes a vital tool that both brings them back to themselves and allows them to feel in control. To soothe the inner pain, they use physical pain as an instrument.
And thus, they bring their inner pain under control. Although these behaviors may seem astonishing, extremely complex, and difficult to understand, they are proof that there is nothing a human being will not do in order to feel themselves. These individuals use their bodies as identity material far more than others. They project their identity onto the body, and then construct their identity from what is reflected back. In other words, beginning from the formulation that the skin surrounds the body and the body shapes identity, they create an identity from intertwined layers. Here, the memory function of the body is important. Body memory seeks to retrieve what was once deeply repressed and trapped within childhood amnesia. Or, through the body, the person rewrites the story of their own identity—this time with physical evidence. If history exists through writing, then a person’s history is written on the body that will remain until death. The self-life, the self-identity, is re-formed and passed on to future generations. Self-harm is a language. It is a language used only by those who cannot verbalize this experience. It is a special but archaic language.
If the body is an organ of sense and touch, then those who harm themselves, through bodily contact, also touch and feel their own self. For these individuals, pain stands before all other emotions; they are those who cannot feel sadness or sorrow. Because they cannot transform pain into sorrow, their only psychological and identity-related raw material is “pain.” For them, the physical wounds inflicted on their bodies act like anesthesia to soothe their inner suffering. Physical pain becomes both the spokesperson and the remedy for inner tension and torment. For those who self-harm, the cuts regulate pain, and the flowing blood fills the emptiness they feel. Therefore, the thought prevails: “Since I created these wounds, cuts, and every modification, they are the concrete proof of my existence and my being.” “If for me inaction, lifelessness, and immobility represent death, then movement and every form of action are what revive this dead soul of mine.”
One piece of evidence showing that cutting behavior is linked to identity is that the vast majority of those who self-harm never cut their face. Because the face is related to identity. The aim is not to destroy identity but to reconstruct it. If we consider the body as the raw material of identity, then the material for this reconstruction is taken from the body itself. The skin surrounds the body; the body shapes identity. These concepts do not exclude one another but remain connected through a thin membrane, serving each other in cooperation. If the body is an organ of touch, then those who harm themselves use the body to obtain a tactile experience on their sense of self, attempting to shape it. Adding to Anzieu’s 1985 expression “I suffer, therefore I am,” it would not be wrong to say, “As long as I can control my pain, I exist.”
Attack on the body is an attack on the self. This attack is actually an intervention. It belongs to the one whose boundaries have disappeared or are about to disappear, whose stability is lost, who has been deformed or transformed but whose development has come to a halt. This attack is performed with the hope of reactivating stalled development and, through this activation, achieving reintegration and healing.
- To feel that one is alive and exists
- To control inner pain and experience it under one’s own control
- To find and redefine the boundaries of the body
- To draw the boundaries of the body
- To draw boundaries in the relationship with the other (especially against the intrusive archaic mother image)
- Cutting as repeated rebirth; the repeated undoing of the transformation of physical birth into later psychological death—a thousand rebirths for one death
- To expel the damaged, fluid, boundaryless self through blood—expelling what is fluid with another vital fluid
- Piercing, tattoos, and other body modifications, especially in adolescents, are carried out with the need for completion and integration
In fact, cutting is about removing excess and shaping. The excess refers to the desire to separate what is attached to or merged with one’s own body. The unnecessary excess replaces what is truly necessary, making the absence felt even more.
