Cutting and Self-Injury

This is all becoming a little bit clearer to me now...

From Lori G. Plante's Bleeding to Ease the Pain: Cutting, Self-Injury, and the Adolescent Search for Self 

"Psychologist Scott Lines put it this way: ‘The skin becomes a battlefield as a demonstration of internal chaos.  The place where the self meets the world is a canvas or tabula rasa on which is displayed exactly how bad one feels inside.’"

"Historically, prior to the 1800s, Western cultures viewed self-injury as mortification of the flesh, a Christian concept practiced for religious atonement through suffering."

"Gruenbaum and Klerman followed suit in conceptualizing cutting as ‘self-prescribed treatment’ of distress.  Scar tissue ensued as a representation of healing, symbolizing an almost surgical removal of pain."

"Many comparisons can be drawn between the self-affliction of anorexia and bulimia with that of cutting, burning or otherwise damaging the body.  As stated by Cross, self-cutting and eating disorders are ‘attempts to own the body…thinness is self-sufficiency, bleeding emotional catharsis, bingeing is the assuaging of lonliness, and purign is the moral purification of the self.’  Further, ‘Body and slef constantly shift roles of victim and victimizer, master and slave.’"