Overview

""I highly recommend A Bright Red Scream , because it's beautifully written and . . .socandid."" -Amy Adams, star of HBO's Sharp ObjectsinEntertainment Weekly Self-mutilation is a behavior so shocking that it is almost never discussed. Yet estimates are that upwards of eight million Americans are chronic self-injurers. They are people who use knives, razor blades, or broken glass to cut themselves. Their numbers include the actor Johnny Depp, Girl Interrupted author Susanna Kaysen, and the late Princess Diana. Mistakenly viewed as suicide attempts or senseless masochism-even by many health professionals-""cutting"" is actually a complex means of coping with emotional pain. Marilee Strong explores this hidden epidemic through case studies, startling new research from psychologists, trauma experts, and neuroscientists, and the heartbreaking insights of cutters themselves--who range from troubled teenagers to middle-age professionals to grandparents. Strong explains what factors lead to self-mutilation, why cutting helps people manage overwhelming fear and anxiety, and how cutters can heal both their internal and external wounds and break the self-destructive cycle. A Bright Red Scream is a groundbreaking, essential resource for victims of self-mutilation, their families, teachers, doctors, and therapists.

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9780140280531

Table of Contents

Reviews

I read a book called A Bright Red Scream, and read about people's emotional release that comes with the cutting. It's a very complicated issue, and if anyone's curious, I highly recommend that book, because it's beautifully written and people are so candid. -Amy Adams, in Entertainment Weekly on her role in Sharp Objects A compelling tour of the trauma and science of self-injury -Time A Bright Red Scream is thick with scientific studies, up-to-date research and-most important-tender . . . portraits of real-life cutters. -New York Post Riveting and dynamically written, this book is an important addition to psychological literature. -Publisher's Weekly (starred review) An imporessive complement to Mary Pipher's bestselling explication of the woes of adolescent girls, Reviving Ophelia. -Booklist A Bright Red Scream has the hallmark of a classic work on a topic that [is] impossible to ignore. -San Diego Tribune

A compassionate and informed discussion of self-mutilation, the addiction of the '90s, practiced by two million or more Americans. Self-mutilation has surfaced as a fad of pubescent girls, who use razor blades to carve their forearms with, for instance, names of their boyfriends. It's called cutting and is what Dr. Armando Favazza, in the preface, refers to as superficial/moderate self-mutilation. In other cultures or at other times, cutting, flagellation or similar forms of self-mortification have been regarded as physically healing, spiritually uplifting, or tribally bonding. Today Americans are horrified at the idea of painful blood-letting, associating it immediately with suicide. But the cutters described here are neither faddish or suicidal. They are using their razors, knives, broken glass - or cigarette lighters - to live. Like anorexia and bulimia (also efforts to gain control), some forms of self-mutilation serve as controls for unbearable rage and emotional pain that would otherwise lead to a psychotic break. Many cutters have suffered sexual or physical abuse as children, and the trauma they carry with them as adults is similar to posttraumatic stress disorder, says Strong. Among the symptoms is dissociation, where mind and body separate, leaving numbness and emptiness. For some, the only way to reunite the two is by hurting themselves - the pain returns them to awareness. It may also release natural opiates, like endorphins, that minimize the emotional and physical pain; that may be one reaction that contributes to the addictive nature of the experience. Strong (a journalist who has written previously on child victims of war trauma) examines the theories of physiology, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience in relation to the need to self-mutilate; enriching her research are interviews with more than 50 cutters, some found on the Internet site where selfmutilators can talk to one another. The final two chapters discuss treatment alternatives. Humane, empathetic, and informed exploration of a frightening complex of behavior; it will be valuable to professionals, families, friends, and most of all to the cutters themselves. (Kirkus Reviews)

An impressive complement to Mary Pipher's bestselling explication of the woes of adolescent girls, Reviving Ophelia -- BOOKLIST

Author Information

Marilee Strong has written for the Atlanta Constitution and San Diego Union. The recipient of a Pulitzer Fellowship to report on child victims of war trauma, she has won a National Headliner Award and a Society for Professional Journalists Excellence Award. She lives in Oakland, California.

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