Shifting Conversations on Girls’ and Women’s Self-Injury: an Analysis of the Clinical Literature in Historical Context

The author presents a historical review of girls’ & women’s episodic & repetitive self-injury in the clinical literature from 1913 to the present. Moving from research studies which indicate that self-injury typically presents in females during adolescence, this article elucidates how self-injury may reflect girls’ developmental struggles within a patriarchal culture & embody a narrative of women’s experiences of violation. The author argues that the historical discourse on self-injury mimics women’s experiences of objectification & violence by silencing & distorting their self-injury. (192 refs)