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Seminar

Making up self-injury: embodying authenticity in medicine and society

Eric Anthony Johnson / Alamy Stock Photo
Eric Anthony Johnson / Alamy Stock Photo

In this seminar Dr Chandler will discuss some of the ways in which self-injury is ‘made up’ through often contradictory narratives which attempt to define and give meaning to self-injuring practices. The paper draws on the accounts of people who have self-injured, as well as on published research and commentary, including the DSM-5 text for the proposed diagnosis ‘Non-Suicidal Self-Injury’.

Dr Chandler suggests that the concept of authenticity can be identified as a common thread running through contemporary attempts to make sense of self-injury. Thus, people who have self-injured draw on increasingly established ways of narrating into being a particular form of authentic self-injury: hidden, severe enough, carried out for the ‘right’ reasons. Clinical accounts of self-injury are also oriented towards demonstrating or disproving ‘authenticity’ in a particular act of self-injury, or in the body of the self-injuring person. Amy argues that the close association between self-injury and authenticity can be intensely problematic. Ideas of self-injury and authenticity may shape particular forms of self-injuring practice, as well as encouraging stigmatising responses to self-injuries framed as inauthentic. Further, Amy suggests that because of enduring dualistic modes of thought and practice which seek to separate ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ health, while privileging the latter, any act of self-injury may be open to charges of inauthenticity.

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Admission
Free to attend and open to all, with no ticket required. Entry will be on a first come, first served basis.

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