Identification allows for humans to have their own vicarious experiences Definition of vicarious experience – 1. Experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another 2. Experienced or realised through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another Both of these talk of imagination and thus we could say this process works …
Working with the rebellious person
Listening to a person talk about how they cut self is stress producing for most people including therapists. The therapist needs to be clear they do not fall into subtly pressuring the client into making the contract due to their own anxieties.
Gallows transaction
Games allow a person to further their life script. It is the way a person progresses along the path of the life script to its inevitable conclusion.
Self harm motives
In my view it is better to view self harm as a fluid, changing form of psychopathology rather than a static one reason form of pathology.
Self harm and suicide
However it is not uncommon for people to confuse the two. For instance if a mother see’s her daughter is cutting self it is understandable how she can then conclude that the daughter is suicidal. However this is not accurate.
Halloween and violent fantasy
Halloween make up, like these pictures, allows the teenage girl to release her sublimated urges to self harm, leading to a healthy outcome.
Suicide and depression
This is what we need to be screening for and indeed this is what I did when I worked in prison identifying suicidal and self harming inmates. If one identifies people with this injunction, as I did with many in the prison system, one knows this person is quite capable of suicide at a later time.