A Bright Red Scream: Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain Paperback - 1999

Summary

First line

It's that feeling again You wake up and see blood stains on your sheets and on your carpet.

From the rear cover

Meet Daphne, age sixteen. There are times when she hurts so bad, "too deep for tears", that she must shed her own blood to "let out some of the hurt". There's Annie, a woman who stopped injuring herself years ago but admits that she would cut again because she loves her scars too much, loves the control they give her over her own body. And Lukas, a forty-three-year old lawyer, describes the powerful, soothing rush he gets from his self-induced wounds: "The feeling I get when the blood comes out is better than anything. It's better than drinking, it's better than any drug I've ever taken, it's better than sex".

Why do some people need to inflict pain on themselves? At least two million Americans, and millions more worldwide, are cutters -- notably, the late Princess Diana. Yet, the reasons behind the need to self-mutilate are profoundly complex and largely misunderstood. Marilee Strong shatters the stereotypes and dispels the myths surrounding the phenomenon of self-mutilation and gets to the heart of the matter by way of her subjects. The voices of cutters themselves, combined with Strong's own astute observations, make for an unparalleled exploration of the disorder that has been called the "addiction of the nineties".