Selvskade som selvteknologi

Abstract

Based on the different professional backgrounds of the authors (anthropologist and psychologist), and taking postmodern ideas, exemplified by social constructionism and poststructuralism
as a common epistemological starting point, self-injury is described as social suffering. The authors present the concepts of “idioms of distress” (Mark Nichter), “technologies of the self” (Michel Foucault) and “small acts of living” (Erving Goffman) and uses them as perspectives in a critical description of treatment culture based on a field study by Helen Gremillion. This critique is continued in a paragraph concerning the postmodern challenge in relation to self-injury. Finally, we outline some principles of
how to work with people who self-injure in a postmodern therapeutic practice.