Introduction

Abstract

For many people in the 1990s self-harm seemed to come from nowhere. It appeared abruptly in the cultural consciousness, as inexplicable as it was disturbing, and escalated rapidly through the decade from a little known and little discussed act of deviance that had been mostly associated with punks, goths and the mentally troubled to a potent social symbol of distress and estrangement, not to mention a significant object of public anxiety. Suddenly, Princess Diana was on television talking about how she had cut herself with razor blades, a penknife and a lemon slicer because she needed to express, to get out of herself, the emotional pain that she felt was trapped inside.¹ And then there was a controversial photograph, considered brilliantly cool by some and deeply troubling by others, of a thin young man from a rock band with the words ‘4REAL’ carved into his forearm, his wounds fresh and bloody. By the end of the decade self-harm had become what the journalist Marilee Strong (1998) described as ‘the addiction of the 90s’; a highly recognisable if somewhat haunting presence in our lives, which regularly appeared in the social imaginary of newspapers and magazines, songs, television shows and movies (Sutton, 2005; Adler and Adler, 2011; McShane, 2012). Celebrities confessed to it, journalists and social commentators expressed concern over it and the experts warned of a still largely hidden facet of modern life affecting schools, universities, prisons and homes (Babiker and Arnold, 1997). In the words of the psychiatrist Armando Favazza (1998), self-harm had ‘come of age’.