Nonsuicidal self-injury and intersubjective recognition: ‘You can’t argue with wounds’

Abstract

This article explores the relevance of intersubjective recognition and the ‘recognition theoretical turn’ to our understanding of nonsuicidal self-injury. While previous research has demonstrated that self-injury possesses an important social dimension alongside its intrapsychic characteristics, a major challenge for any social approach to self-injury has been to find a way to describe and analyse this dimension without reductively implying that self-injury is a form of ‘attention-seeking’, where this describes a pejorative accusation of social manipulation. One possible solution to this challenge lies in the concept of intersubjective recognition and the idea that what some have interpreted as ‘attention-seeking’ behaviour is perhaps better understood as recognition-seeking. As such, we draw on data from a 2016–2017 English pilot study to examine three basic questions: (1) does self-injury constitute, at least in some cases and amongst its many other observed intrapsychic and social functions, a form of recognition-seeking? (2) if so, how does self-injury work as a claim to recognition? and (3), how do we solve the apparent contradiction of using a stigmatic mark as a means of claiming a normative status? Our study suggests that one of self-injury’s intersubjective imperatives is the need to be listened to and taken seriously, to have one’s feelings and experiences confirmed by others as being legitimate and valid. As such, intersubjective recognition does appear to form a distinct part of the overdetermined complex of meanings and effects associated with self-injury and may be an important factor in a number of cases.