Making Sense of Self-Harm - by Peter Steggals (Hardcover)

About the Book

Making Sense of Self-Harm provides an alternative examination of nonsuicidal self-injury, using Cultural Sociology and the conceptual insights of Michel Foucault, Norbert Elias and Ludwig Wittgenstein to map the hidden meanings of self-harm and reveal it more as a kind of practice than an illness; a powerful cultural idiom of personal distress and social estrangement that is peculiarly resonant with the symbolic life of late-modern society.

Book Synopsis

Making Sense of Self-Harm provides an alternative approach to understanding nonsuicidal self-injury; using Cultural Sociology to analyse it more as a practice than an illness and exploring it as a powerful cultural idiom of personal distress and social estrangement that is peculiarly resonant with the symbolic life of late-modern society.

About the Author

Peter Steggals is Visiting Researcher in Medical Sociology at Newcastle University, UK. He has previously worked with self-harming prisoners as part of a Forensic Psychology unit in Her Majesty's Prison Service.