I guess I can sort of understand an argument for outward-directed violence being more "healthy" in some way than inward-directed violence (though I think it would depend on where outward you were directing it--I can clearly see how "He hurt me, I hit him" is better than "He hurt me, I hit myself," but "He hurt me, I hit an unrelated third party" is a completely different animal). However I would not call self-injury "psychologically nonproductive." I personally found it productive, and have at several points since I stopped wished I were in a position where I could easily utilize the tool again.
Though I agree that it is to a large extent the "rich white woman's response." But I wonder whether that's because of the kinds of reasons we think, or because other populations self-injure in more private and insidious ways and are less public about it.... I'm not a very extreme example of a self-injurer, so perhaps I'm not representative, but I also can't imagine how outwardly directing my violence would have done anything but make me feel worse. Perhaps that's because I don't have the easily-identifiable cause of my pain that many of your clients have? If all that the unhappy rich kid has is a nebulous desperation, outwardly-directed violence may be less common because it's just not as helpful for that particular kind of pain. In any case, for better or for worse I am a rich white woman, and maybe it's a matter of using the tools that are available to us.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-10 11:38 pm (UTC)Though I agree that it is to a large extent the "rich white woman's response." But I wonder whether that's because of the kinds of reasons we think, or because other populations self-injure in more private and insidious ways and are less public about it.... I'm not a very extreme example of a self-injurer, so perhaps I'm not representative, but I also can't imagine how outwardly directing my violence would have done anything but make me feel worse. Perhaps that's because I don't have the easily-identifiable cause of my pain that many of your clients have? If all that the unhappy rich kid has is a nebulous desperation, outwardly-directed violence may be less common because it's just not as helpful for that particular kind of pain. In any case, for better or for worse I am a rich white woman, and maybe it's a matter of using the tools that are available to us.