Characteristics of Self Mutilation art work?

Answer 1

A psychoanalytic framework provided direction for research on the association between binge-purging (bulimic) and self-mutilating behaviors, comparing them for similarities and differences. The similarities in the multiple functions and psychosomatic processes served by these behaviors are presented, as well as the phenomenon of symptom substitution. Both behaviors tend to be practiced by those with severe personality and dissociative disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder. Both serve ego-compensatory needs in the absence of the adequate ability to regulate and modulate emotions, moods, and tensions. They may serve as compensatory attempts to differentiate self and object, define and differentiate body boundaries, master severe childhood trauma by means of psychophysiological addictive reenactments, and to express emotion.
Self-mutilation has begun to receive scientific attention just as eating disorders began to in the 1970’s. It was stated almost three decades ago that self-mutilators are “the new chronic patients in mental hospitals, replacing schizophrenics” (Graff and Mallin, 1967, p.72). In 1994 the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene sponsored a statewide telecast on self-mutilation (Favazza, 1994), which was viewed simultaneously by the clinical staffs of several New York state psychiatric centers. In 1996 this author did a presentation (Farber, 1996) on these behaviors at the New York State Mental Health Association Conference, Sexual Abuse Survivors Diagnosed with Serious Mental Illnesses. Such presentations constitute a public acknowledgment that self-harm is a problem of major proportions in patients with serious mental illness.